


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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I'iO Longitude 110 West 100 



TRAVELS THROUGH 

NORTH AMERICA 

WITH THE CHILDREN 



4 

BY 



FRANK G. CARPENTER 



-3^^£ 



NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 



u036 



Copyright, 1898, by 
Frank G. Carpenter. 

Carp. N. Am. 




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PREFACE. 



The purpose of this book is to give to its readers a 
living knowledge of some of the wonders of the country 
and continent in which they Hve. Upon a personally con- 
ducted tour they are ^en by the author through the 
most characteristic parts of the North American continent. 
They travel through the United States, British America, 
Mexico, and Central America, studying the most interest- 
ing features of life and work among the people of each 
country, learning how they are governed, and what they 
do in order to live. Much information is also given con- 
cerning the natural resources and the physical features of 
the countries visited. 

The greater part of the journey is taken in the United 
States. Here the young Americans learn what makes us 
a great nation, and see for themselves the sources of our 
national wealth. They visit our chief -cities. They go 
through the cotton and tobacco plantations of the South, 
linger under the orange groves of Florida, and spend some 
time among the vast corn and bread lands of the North. 
They travel over the plains. They go down into the 
mines and see how coal, iron, copper, gold, and silver are 
taken out of the depths of the earth and turned to the use 
of man. They spend days in the forests visiting the lum- 

5 



6 PREFACE. 

ber camps and hunting for game. They see the great 
natural wonders of our country, now stopping awhile at 
Niagara Falls, now drifting down through the Grand Can- 
yon of the Colorado, now resting under the shadow of 
the big trees of California, and later on wandering about 
among the wonderful geysers of the Yellowstone Park. 

From Fuget Sound they sail north to Alaska, the land of 
ice, gold, and seals, and thence travel up the Yukon River 
and over the frozen plains to the Mackenzie. After ex- 
ploring the great fur lands of the northern part of our 
continent, they return southward and visit the settled parts 
of Canada, including its capital and its other great cities. 

From Halifax they take ship for Mexico, going almost 
directly from the cold lands of the North to the semi- 
tropical regions of our sister republic. They ascend 
Popocatepetl, travel over the Mexican plateau, and then, 
after a journey through Central America, close the tour at 
the Isthmus of Panama, and sail for New York. 

These imaginary tours which the children make will, it 
is believed, not only give them much valuable information 
of a practical character, but will inspire them with intelli- 
gent patriotic motives and with a commendable pride in 
our country's institutions. 



CONTENTS, 



I. General View of North America 
II. In our National Capital 
III. A Visit to the President and to the Halls of Congress 
IV. The Departments of the Government . 
V. Baltimore and our Oyster Beds 
VI. In Philadelphia-A Visit to the Mint . 
VII. New York and Some of its Wonders . 
VIII. Our Foreign Commerce . • . • 

IX. New England— Commerce and Manufactures 
X. Among the Mountains and Lakes of New Englan( 

XL In Boston 

XII. From New England South by Steamer 
XIII. In the Land of Cotton 
XIV. Among the Ricefields 
XV. A Visit to a Turpentine Farm 
XVI. Florida and its Orange Groves . 
XVII. Through the Mississippi Jetties to New Orleans 
XVIII. A Visit to a Sugar Plantation 
XIX. Up the Mississippi River to St. Louis 

XX. Indian Corn and the Corn Belt . 
XXI. A Visit to a Great Wheat Farm . 
XXII. A Journey on the Great Lakes . 

XXIII. The Iron and Copper Mines of Lake Superior 

XXIV. Life in the Lumber Regions 
XXV. Our Great Cities on the Lakes . 

XXVI. A Visit to Niagara Falls . 

7 



PAGE 

9 
14 
25 
34 
45 
50 
57 
65 
76 
84 
91 
99 
109 
119 

125 
130 

135 
143 
150 
159 
164 
172 
179 
184 
190 

195 



CONTENTS. 



XXVII. Travels in the Oil Regions 

XXVIII. Travels in the Coal Regions . 

XXIX. Pittsburg and its Iron Works 

XXX. The Greatest Lake Port in the World 

XXXI. The Wonders and Treasures of the 

Region .... 

XXXII. A Visit to a Gold Mine 

XXXIII. A Day in a Silver Mine 

XXXIV. Across the Rockies to Salt Lake 

XXXV. The Fairyland of California . 

XXXVI. San Francisco and the Chinese 

XXXVII. The Pacific Northwest . 

XXXVIII. The Yellowstone National Park 

XXXIX. Among the Indians 

XL. Alaska and the Seal Islands . 

XLI. British America 

XLII. The Cities of Canada 

XLIII. Spanish North America— Mexico 

XLIV. Travels in Mexico . 

XLV. Central America . 



Rocky 



Mountain 



PAGE 

211 

218 
225 

241 
248 
256 
264 

274 
278 
284 
290 
298 
306 

327 

345 



LIST OF MAPS. 



North America ........ Frontispiece 

United States ........... 16 

Alaska ............ 298 

British America .......... 308 

Mexico ............ 329 

Central America 346 



TRAVELS THROUGH 

NORTH AMERICA 



3>S^C 



I. GENERAL VIEW OF NORTH AMERICA. 

WE start to-day upon our travels through the North 
American continent. We are about to explore 
one of the most wonderful of the grand divisions of the 
globe. It is that part of the earth upon which we live, 
and the most of our time will be spent in the vast region 
known as the United States, which we are proud to call 
our own country. 

What would you think of a farmer who did not know 
his own farm, or what he had on it? A wise landowner 
will know just where the boundaries of his possessions are 
and what line fences separate him from his neighbors. He 
will know every hill and valley, every pond and stream. 
He will go through the woods to see if there is any game, 
and will drop his fishing line into the different streams and 
ponds to learn about the fish. He will try to know just 
what kind of crop each field will produce, and he will learn 
over what roads he can most easily carry his crops to mar- 
ket. Perhaps he will dig in the hills to learn if they con- 
tain coal, iron, or copper; and if any one tells him there 

9 



lO NORTH AMERICA. 

is gold or silver on his farm, you may be sure he will not 
rest until he knows just where it is. He will ask all sorts 
of questions about his neighbors — what kind of people they 
are, and just how they live; and he will not stop until he 
knows something about everything that is going on around 
him. 

Now the boys and girls of this country, together with 
their parents, are the owners of a vast tract of land known 
as the ** United States." It is in the grand division of 
North America; and all of its possessors, being sensible 
persons, are interested in learning whatever is to be known 
of its resources, its various advantages, and its immediate 
surroundings. This is indeed what we shall try to learn 
in the travels that we are about to describe in this book. 

Before we start let us take a bird's-eye view of the 
country. Suppose, for a moment, that we can take a trip 
to the moon, and suppose we have there a telescope so 
powerful that we can see the whole world ; what sort 
of a picture does our continent make when thus spread 
out before us? 

We see that North and South America are two vast 
peninsulas, each almost surrounded by water. North 
America is the larger. And the narrow Isthmus of Pan- 
ama, with its luxuriant vegetation, looks like a green chain 
connecting the two. 

Should we attempt to draw straight lines about North 
America, we should find that the land lies almost in the 
shape of a triangle, the northern and eastern sides of which 
are of much the same length. Upon each of these two 
sides we might see a great silvery spot where the waters 
from the ocean extend into the land. That on the north 
lies just below about the middle of the line, and is known 
as Hudson Bay ; while that on the east lies near the foot 



GENERAL VIEW. II 

of the line at the south, and is the Gulf of Mexico, with 
the green island of Cuba bordering its edge. 

As we stand upon the moon we may take a rapid glance 
about the coast of this vast country. There, at the north- 
west, is Bering Strait, a thin line of silvery water only sixty 
miles wide, which separates North America from Asia. 
Starting from this, our eyes travel southward, along the 
western coast of Alaska, the Dominion of Canada, the 
United States, Mexico, and Central America, to the Isthmus 
of Panama. Here we cross, and, turning to the left, we 
follow the coast of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of 
Mexico. Reaching the Atlantic Ocean at the southern 
point of Florida, we follow its shore line until we pass 
New York and New England. Farther north we notice 
the rocky coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador ; and then 
our eyes, dazzled by the snow, roam among the icebergs 
of the Arctic Ocean until at last they rest again upon our 
starting point in Bering Strait. 

Such a view shows us something of the vast extent of 
North America. The line about the coast is nowhere reg- 
ular ; it has many capes, bays, and gulfs ; and could we 
measure its windings, we should find that it is almost as 
long as the entire distance round the earth. 

Within this coast line lies about one sixth of all the dry 
land on the globe. North America is, in fact, the third in 
size among the grand divisions of the earth. It is more 
than twice as big as Europe, and the only grand divisions 
which surpass it in area are Asia and Africa. 

As we look down upon it we see that the most of North 
America is made up of plains, and that in general it con- 
sists of a great central valley, or trough, running from north 
to south between high lands and long mountain ranges. 
The green Appalachians, a little back from the Atlantic 



12 



NORTH AMERICA. 



Ocean, form the eastern side of the trough ; far away in 
the west are the wide plateaus and the lofty, snow-clad 
peaks of the Rocky Mountain highland ; while between 
these mountain regions lie the central plains of the 




Scene in the Rocky Mountains. 



Mississippi, the Saskatchewan, and the Mackenzie rivers. 
These plains reach from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson 
Bay and the Arctic Ocean, and form one of the largest 
valleys of the earth. 

Halfway up this valley, near the Great Lakes, the land 
rises slightly so as to form the water parting called the 
Height of Land. Above this point the streams flow to the 
northeast and north, and empty themselves into the cold 
waters of Hudson Bay or of the Arctic Ocean. Below 
it they flow to the south and are lost in the warm Gulf of 
Mexico. The slopes of the valley in both directions, how- 
ever, are so slight that one may go through it from the 
Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean without perceiving 
that he is going up or down hill. 



GENERAL VIEW. 13 

But let us fix the telescope directly upon our own coun- 
try. There is the United States, lying in the middle of the 
continent. The broad lands north of it are the Dominion 
of Canada, while south of it are Mexico and Central 
America, extending like a handle to the great body of the 
continent. 

Think of it! AH of that land between Mexico and the 
Dominion of Canada belongs to us. What a big country 
it is! It is so wide from east to west that it takes more 
than five days and nights on a fast railroad train to cross 
it ; and its average length from north to south is thirteen 
hundred miles. The United States is one of the largest 
countries in the world, and, with the territory of Alaska, 
it contains almost as much land as all Europe. 

The United States is a very rich country. Those moun- 
tains on its eastern edge contain millions of tons of iron, 
and thousands of men are now digging in them to get out 
the ore. Among the same mountains are vast fields of 
coal, and the streams which flow down the hill slopes fur- 
nish water power for thousands of factories. 

The Rocky Mountain highland, in the western part of 
the country, contains vast quantities of gold, silver, cop- 
per, and lead, and we shall see the miners taking the metals 
out of the hills. There are many wild animals among these 
mountains, and during our tour we shall have splendid 
hunting and fishing. 

Between the eastern mountains and this great mountain 
plateau of the West lies one of the most fertile valleys of 
the world. See those silvery Hnes which wind their way 
through it, as we look down upon it from the moon. They 
look like threads at this distance, but they are really great 
rivers, and all parts of the valley through which they flow 
are well-watered lands. That valley is the Mississippi 



14 THE UNITED STATES. 

Valley, and the band of silver which runs through it from 
north to south is the Mississippi River, which, with its 
great branch the Missouri, is the longest river in the world. 

But what are those patches of silver west of the Appa- 
lachians? They look quite large as they lie there below 
us. Those are the Great Lakes, the biggest bodies of 
fresh water on the globe. They are so big that they seem 
like seas, and when we travel upon them we shall often be 
out of sight of land. 

The United States is a country of homes. Its valleys 
and plains are dotted with cities and towns, and are cov- 
ered with a network of black Hnes. Those lines are the 
railroads. The UniteJ States has more railroads than any 
other country on the globe. 

It is one of the busiest lands on the earth. It now con- 
tains more than seventy millions of people, and these are 
engaged in so many different kinds of work that, as our 
eyes move over the land, we seem almost to hear the hum of 
the machinery, away up here on the moon. It is indeed 
an interesting land, and we ought to be proud that we can 
call it our country. It is so vast that we hardly know 
where to begin to explore it. But there in the East is its 
capital, the city of Washington, and from there we shall 
start. 

II. IN OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL. 

IT seems strange that our national capital should be so far 
away from the center of the United States. You would 
think it ought to be in the Mississippi Valley, about half- 
way between the Dominion of Canada and the Gulf of 
Mexico. It is on the Potomac River, about a hundred 



OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL. 



15 



miles from its mouth, and only a short distance from the 
Atlantic coast. It is on the eastern side of the Appala- 
chian Mountains, a long way from the Mississippi Valley, 
and thousands of miles from the lofty plateaus of the 
West. The inhabitants of Oregon, California, and Wash- 
ington have to travel almost three thousand miles if they 
would see the President, and, indeed, most of our people 
are many hundreds of miles away from their capital. 




The Old City of Washington. 



Now the capital of a country is where the chief officers 
of its government live and do business, and many of the 
people who have business with the government must go 
to the capital. If it were not for the railroads, this, for many 
of us, would be quite inconvenient ; and were it not for the 
telegraph and telephone it would be almost impossible to 
govern well such a large country from a capital so situated. 



l8 THE UNITED STATES. 

But why was the capital located so far from the center 
of the United States ? 

The story is connected with the growth of our country. 

When the Americans, in the Revolutionary War, forced 
England to allow them to govern themselves, there were 
but few people in our country, and it was not thought 
that the United States would ever extend so far westward. 
The most of our people then lived east of the Appalachian 
Mountains. The lands to the westward were filled with 
wild Indians, and deer and bears roamed through the 
dense forests. We did not then own any land beyond the 
Mississippi River, and the site of Washington city was al- 
most in the center of the inhabited country ; so when a 
location for the capital of the new government had to be 
chosen, this was thought to be the best place. 

Congress was then sitting in Philadelphia. It was be- 
fore the days of railroads, and President Washington came 
in a carriage to the village of Georgetown, which is now a 
part of the capital, and arranged with the farmers to sell 
their lands to the government. Soon after this the work 
of laying out the city began ; but it was almost ten years 
before the White House was finished and a building put 
up on Capitol Hill in which Congress could come together 
to make laws. 

The first President who lived in Washington was John 
Adams. He came alone to the capital, leaving his wife to 
follow him. In doing so, she lost her way in traveling 
through the woods from Baltimore to Washington, and in 
one of her letters she says she rode for miles without see- 
ing a human being. 

At this time a large part of Washington stood in the 
woods. There were stumps in some of the chief streets, 
and in wet weather Pennsylvania Avenue was almost a 



OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL. 



19 



river of mud. The congressmen and other officials did 
not Hke the new capital. For a long time they nicknamed 
it by such titles as the " Wilderness City," the " City of 
Miserable Huts," and the " City of Streets without Houses." 
It steadily grew, however, and it now contains more than 
a quarter of a million of people, and is said by travelers to 
be the finest capital city in the world. 




General View of Washing'ton at the Present Time. 

The plan of Washington is a beautiful one. From the 
Capitol building as a center, the city is laid out in four 
great parts, in each of which the streets cross one another 
at right angles, making them look as if four checkerboards 
had been there joined together. Through the checker- 
boards, running in all directions, there are wide avenues, 



20 



THE UNITED STATES. 



and where these avenues cut through the streets there are 
circular and triangular parks. The circles and triangles are 
filled with statues, fountains, flowers, and trees, and they 
form one of the chief beauties of the citv. 




One of the Small P^rks in Washington. 

Why were these little parks so placed? 

It was not so much for beauty as for defense. The man 
who planned Washington was a Frenchman, Major Pierre 
I'Enfant, who had left Paris about the time of the French 
Revolution, when the mobs were destroying the govern- 
ment. In laying out our capital he had the bloody scenes 
of Paris in his mind, and he planned a city which he 
thought could be easily defended and at the same time be 
beautiful. Each of the Httle parks controls several streets, 



OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL. 



21 



and a cannon placed in its center could b-e turned around 
and thus fire shot down a half-dozen different streets. 

We shall take bicycles for our tour through the city. 
Washington has more than two hundred miles of streets 
that are almost as smooth as a floor. They are paved 
with gray asphalt, and are lined with shade trees whose 
branches often meet overhead, forming long arbors of 
maples and magnificent elms. The city seems to be built 
in a forest, with long lines of houses rising out of the trees. 
Along the streets back of the sidewalks are wide strips of 
green lawn which extend up to the walls of the houses. 




The Library of Congress. 



We devote our first day to a run about the city. The 
great government buildings are often far apart, and it is a 
full mile from the White House to the Capitol, which is 
situated on a high hill to the eastward. 

Farther on we come to the National Library building, 



22 



THE UNITED STATES. 



which is the most beautiful pubHc building in the United 
States. It covers nearly four acres of ground, and its great 
golden dome, as big as the largest circus tent, can be seen 
shining in the sunlight for many miles about Washington. 
Leaving the library, we ride a mile farther to the navy- 
yard, on the eastern branch of the Potomac. We are al- 
low^ed to pass in by the soldiers guarding the gate, and we 




The Smithsonian Institution. 

visit the foundries w^here the great guns for our battle ships 
are made. We next go to the arsenal to watch the parade 
of some of the companies of soldiers who are here to 
guard our capital city. Then we go back to the White 
House through the long park known as the Mall, which 
Hes south of Pennsylvania Avenue. This park is filled 
with beautiful trees, under the branches of which we ride 
as we pass the red brick building of the National Museum, 



OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL. 



23 



wheel by the great brownstone castle-like Smithsonian 
Institution, and go out among the beautiful flower beds 
back of which stand the offices and greenhouses of the 
Agricultural Department. 

A little farther on, we leave the trees and enter a large 
green field, one edge of w^hich is washed by the waters of 
the Potomac River, and 
here we see the high 
monument built in 
memory of George 
Washington. 

The Washington 
Monument may be^seen 
from any part of the 
city. At a long distance 
it looks like a big piece . 
of chalk with a well- 
sharpened point. It 
seems to grow as \ve 
come toward it. It gets 
bigger and bigger, and 
as we walk up the lit- 
tle hill on the bank of 
the Potomac where it 
stands, and put our 
chins against its side, 
and look up, it appears 
to be a huge marble 
wall built right up into 
the sky. 

The monument is 
made of hundreds of blocks of marble, so closely joined 
together that 'you can hardly see where one stone fits 

CARP. N. AM.— 2 




Washington Monument. 



24 THE UNITED STATES. 

into another. It is fifty- five feet square at the base, and 
slopes upward so gradually that, if you could slice off the 
top where the shaft begins to slope to a point, you could 
build there a house with four large rooms on each floor, 
and the edges of the house would not be outside the 
monument. 

The inside of this huge structure is hollow. There is 
an elevator in it, and as we ride to the top the man in 
charge tells us that the Washington Monument is the 
highest stone structure in the world. 

As we stand again at the foot of this monument and look 
toward the north, we face three of our chief government 
buildings. There, at the left, is the huge granite structure 
occupied by the State, War, and Navy Departments ; at 
the right is the somber gray Treasury Department, where 
much of our national money is kept ; and in the center 
shines out the White House, where the President lives. 

We look at our watches, however, and find that it is too 
late to do more to-day. It is almost four o'clock, and the 
government offices are ready to close. 

As we reach the Treasury building a mass of men and 
women pours forth from each of the doors which face 
Pennsylvania Avenue. At the same time the other de- 
partments of the government dismiss their employees, 
and the streets are almost blocked with clerks on their 
way home from work. 

We find that it takes a vast number of people to do 
the public bu.siness of the United States, and we are told 
that more than twenty thousand persons are needed to 
keep the books and carry on the national business at 
Washington. 



A VISIT TO THE PRESIDENT. 



25 



III. A VISIT TO THE PRESIDENT AND TO 
THE HALLS OF CONGRESS. 



OUR first trip to-day will be to the White House. We 
are to meet the President of the United States. 
After that we shall go to the Capitol and see something of 
Congress and the Supreme Court. 

Our government is made up of three branches : the leg- 
islative branch, or Congress, which makes the laws ; the 
executive branch, consisting of the President and his offi- 
cials, which car- 
ries out the laws; 
and the judicial 
branch, or the 
courts, estab- 
lished in order 
to define the 
meaning of the 
laws. The Pres- 
ident is called 
theChief Execu- 
tive of the United 
States. He is, in 
fact, our chief 
business manager. He is elected for a term of four years, 
and he receives a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year. 

We walk up past the Treasury, and soon come to the 
iron gates which form one of the entrances to the White 
House grounds. The gates are wide open, and any one 
may go in. We walk undisturbed up the roadway which 
leads to the great porch before the front door. 

Here we stop to take a good look at the White House 




The White House. 



26 



WASHINGTON. 



before we enter. It is made of sandstone, but is so painted 
that as you view it from the street it looks like a marble 
palace shining among the huge forest trees which surround 
it. A lawn of velvety green lies between it and the street, 
and on our way in we go by a fountain which sends thou- 
sands of silvery drops high into the air. 

The doors before us are of polished mahogany, and each 
of the two big brass knobs upon them bears the figure of 
the American eagle. Now the doors are opened, and a 

messenger asks us to enter. 
We take a few steps and are 
inside the White House, in 
the home of the President of 
the United States. 

The first room we see gives 
us an idea of the great size 
of the building. It is known 
as the Vestibule ; but it is four 
times as big as an ordinary 
parlor, and is in some ways 
so splendid that it makes us 
think of the cave of Aladdin, 
The wall at the back seems 
to be made of jewels and pre- 
cious stones. It consists of 
little pieces of colored glass, 
of all shapes and sizes, fitted together so that they form 
a combination of all the colors of the rainbow. This wall 
was made for the White House by one of the noted jewel- 
ers of our coun-try. It cost thousands of dollars, but one 
old lady who looked at it not long ago thought it was 
cheap. As she saw the many colored pieces of glass she 
said she was glad that the President was so economical that 




Front Door of the White House. 



THE WHITE HOUSE. 27 

he was trying to save the people's money by making the 
walls of his house of old broken bottles. " And it's real 
pretty, too," the woman said, " and you wouldn't think it 
was homemade." 

Turning to the left through this hall, we first visit the 
East Room. This is one of the largest parlors in the 
United States. It takes up the whole east side of the 
White House. Its ceiling is three times as high as that of 
the average schoolroom, and its floor is so big that it re- 
quires more than four hundred yards of carpet to cover it. 
The carpet is of velvet, and so soft that our feet sink down 
into it as we walk through the room. 

The walls of the East Room are painted in silver and 
gold. From its ceiling hang wonderful silver chandeliers, 
upon each of which are thousands of pieces of cut glass. 
In the walls are set eight great mirrors, each as big as the 
largest store window, in which, when the chandeliers are 
lighted for the President's evening parties, the glass pend- 
ants shine like diamonds. At such times there are great 
banks of cut flowers below the mirrors, and flowers and 
ferns are wreathed throughout every part of the vast room. 
There are palm trees and tropical plants in the corners and 
in the windows. The parlor is then filled with gaily 
dressed people, and the whole makes you think of fairyland. 
At the end of the East Room we enter a parlor furnished 
in green and silver, known as the Green Room, and from 
this go into the famous Blue Room, where the President 
stands, with his wife, and shakes hands with those who 
come to his evening receptions. The Blue Room^ is oval in 
shape. Its furniture is of wood covered with gold leaf, and 
cushioned with satin fine enough for the dress of a queen. 
Farther on is a room the walls of which are decorated 
with red satin ; it is known as the Red Room ; and beyond 



28 



WASHINGTON. 



it is the state dining room, where the President gives his 
state dinners to the highest officials and other famous peo- 
ple. We visit the conservatory, where there are so many 
kinds of flowers and beautiful plants that we feel we could 
linger all day among them ; but soon the messenger comes 
and tells us the President is ready to see us. 




The President's Office. 

He takes us upstairs, and opens the door of the Presi- 
dent's office, and a moment later we are standing in front 
of the Chief Executive of the United States. He rises and 
offers his hand, and we are somewhat surprised to find that 
he is not very different from the other men we have known. 
He probably remembers that he was once a little child, too. 
He treats us kindly, and chats with us for a few moments 
about himself and his duties. 



THE CAPITOL. 



29 



The President has much work to do. He Is kept busy 
from dayHght to dark directing the affairs of the govern- 
ment. He has a vast number of officials under him, both 
here and in all parts of the country ; and as we go out we 
hear the click, click, click of a telegraph instrument, and 
are told that an operator is kept in the White House to send 
out the President's orders to all parts of the United States. 




The Capitol. 

Later on we are shown the Cabinet Room, where, three 
times a week, the President advises with the men who 
preside over the different departments of the government. 
Here he discusses with them a vast amount of perplexing 
business ; and we learn that it is a great task to be the ruler 
of a country so large as the United States. 

Now let us leave the White House and make our way 
down Pennsylvania Avenue to the national Capitol. 



30 WASHINGTON. 

What a beautiful building it is! As we ride into the 
park which surrounds it, it appears like a huge marble 
palace with a great white dome floating, as it were, in the 
blue sky. As we come nearer the building grows larger 
and larger, and we believe what the guide tells us, that it 
is not only one of the most beautiful, but also the largest 
building of its kind in the world. It covers three and one 
half acres of ground, and it has so many rooms that there 
are parts of it in which we might get lost and wander 
about a long time without finding our way out. 

Entering the Capitol, we find its rooms swarming with 
people. It is a city in itself, the chief business of which is 
to make laws for our nation. The two great lawmaking 
bodies are at the opposite ends of the building. In the 
south wing is the hall of the House of Representatives, and 
in the north is the chamber of the United States Senate, 
while a wide corridor runs through the building from the 
one to the other. 

We enter at the House side, and, pushing our way 
through the crowds, soon find ourselves in the gallery of 
the biggest legislative hall in the world. We are in the 
hall of the House of Representatives. The floor below us 
is so large that it could be divided into twenty-eight par- 
lors, each sixteen feet square. The ceiling is so high above 
the floor that six of the tallest men might stand one on the 
head of the other within this room, and if the stockings of 
the first man rested upon the floor the hair of the sixth 
would just graze the ceiling. Below the ceiling, running 
all round the room, are banks of galleries which begin at 
the edge of a great central pit and slope upward to the 
walls. 

As we sit in the galleries we can look down into this pit 
upon our representatives in Congress at work. Each has 



THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 



31 



a desk much like a school desk before him, and the scene 
makes us think of a schoolroom, in which the Speaker of 
the House has the place of the teacher. The desks run m 
the shape of a half-moon round a high platform at one side 
of the hall. Upon the platform there is a marble pulpit, 




The Hall of the House of Representatives. 

with the American eagle hanging out from the wall above 
it. This pulpit is the Speaker's desk, and the man who sits 
behind it, with that ivory-headed mallet in his hand, is 
the Speaker of the House, who keeps order and says what 
shall be done. 

But who are the little boys with the silver badges about 
the size of a half-dollar on their coats, who are running to 
and fro with letters and papers in their hands? They do 



32 



WASHINGTON. 



not seem to be more than twelve or fifieen years of age. 
Those are the pages of Congress ; they run errands for the 
congressmen; and each receives two dollars and fifty 
cents a day for his work. When a congressman wants a 
boy he claps his hands, and the boys run to 
him from their seats on the steps of the 
Speaker's platform to get his orders. We 
shall find other boys doing the same work 
in the Senate. 

But just what do the representatives do? 
In connection with the Senate, they make 
the laws to govern this big country of ours, 
and no national law can be enforced until a 
majority of the representatives and senators 
have voted for it and it has been approved 
by the President. 

But how do they become congressmen? 
The people of the United States choose 
the representatives. The states are divided 
into congressional districts, each containing about the same 
number of people. Each district has the right to one mem- 
ber of Congress, and its people choose who he shall be. 
And are the senators chosen in the same way? 
No ; they are elected by the different state legislatures. 
Every state has the right to two senators, and little Rhode 
Island has just as many senators as Texas, which is more 
than two hundred times as big. 

Each senator and each representative gets a salary of 
five thousand dollars a year; but the representatives are 
elected for only two years, while the senators are chosen 
for six. The representatives choose their own Speaker, 
or presiding officer ; but the presiding officer of the Senate 
is the Vice-President of the United States. 




A Page. 



THE SUPREME COURT. 33 

But let us now leave Congress and take a look at the 
Supreme Court. We push our way through the crowds 
about the doors of the House of Representatives, and go 
on into a beautiful hall filled with the marble statues of 
some of the greatest men of our history. 

We pass through the rotunda, or great circular room 
above which the dome rests, and go on into the chief pas- 
sageway between the hall of Representatives and the 
Senate chamber. 

Here we are stopped by a messenger while a curious 
procession crosses the hall. It consists of nine men in 
long gowns of black silk. How dignified they seem, and 
how quiet every one is as they go by! Those are the 
Supreme Court justices. They are the heads of the judi- 
cial branch of our government, and are on their way to the 
court room. 

Now they have passed, and we can go into the same 
room, though by another door. We enter just in time to 
hear the marshal of the court cry out : 

"Oyez! oyez ! oyez ! All persons having business be- 
fore the honorable Supreme Court are admonished to draw 
near and give their attention. The court is now sitting. 
God save the United States and this honorable court!" 

He sings this out in loud tones, running the words to- 
gether into one sentence, and saying them all in one breath. 

As he does so the justices are seating themselves be- 
hind a long mahogany table on a platform at the back of 
the room, their armchairs resting against columns of black- 
and-gray marble. The chief justice is in the center. His 
chair is under a purple canopy, out of which a golden 
American eagle, holding in its beak a strip of metal, upon 
which are painted the words, " In God we trust," looks 
down with fierce eyes upon him. 



34 WASHINGTON. 

The lawyers and people who have business before the 
Supreme Court are seated in a little inclosure below the 
bench. Back of them, against the wall, sit the visitors, 
including ourselves. 

It is usually very quiet in the Supreme Court, for this 
is the most dignified branch of our government. It is so 
quiet to-day, in fact, that we find ourselves almost going 
to sleep after our hard day's sight-seeing. We are fright- 
ened as we catch ourselves nodding, and we rise, and slip 
gently out, and make our way back to our hotel. 



3>®4C 



IV. THE DEPARTMENTS OF THE GOVERN- 
MENT. 

THIS is our last day in Washington. There is so much 
more to be seen that we hardly know where to begin. 
We first visit the big granite building containing the State, 
War, and Navy departments. 

The State Department has charge of the business be- 
tween the United States and foreign nations. Its offices 
take up the south end of the building. Here all our trea- 
ties, or contracts with 
other nations, and our 
most important state pa- 
pers are kept. In the 
library we see the ori- 
jefferson's Desk. ^^ gi^^l Declaration of In- 

dependence, and also the 
little mahogany desk upon which Thomas Jefferson wrote 
it. This desk is so small that you could easily take it on 
your lap. It has little drawers in it for pens and writing 




THE STATE DEPARTMENT. 



35 



materials; and upon lifting the lid, we see pasted upon its 
under side a note in President Jefferson's own handwriting, 
stating that it was upon this desk that he penned that fa- 
mous paper. 

But who are those queer-looking people we see as we 
go through the halls? 

They wear long gowns of bright-colored silk, and upon 
their heads are odd hats of black horsehair. They have 
yellow faces and queerly shaped eyes. They cannot be 




The State, War, and Navy Building. 

women, for they have whiskers, and we have never seen 
men like them before. They are the Korean minister and 
two of his clerks. They have come to call upon the Sec- 
retary of State about some matter of dispute between their 



36 



WASHINGTON. 



country and ours. If we wait here very long we may 
possibly see the Chinese minister or the Russian minister 
come in. All the great nations of the world send men to 
our capital to attend to the business which their govern- 
ments have with the government of the United States ; and 
our President sends his ministers to other capitals all over 
the world, and consuls or business agents to every great 
city. 

The Navy Department is in the side of the building 
which faces the White House. Here the Secretary of the 
Navy has his offices, and here many clerks are at work 
upon matters relating to our navy. A country like 
ours must have many war ships to defend it. There is 
always danger that some other nation may have trouble 
with us and may send gunboats to destroy our cities on 




U. S. Cruiser l-hw York. 



the seacoast. Every great nation has a navy. We 
know we are in the Navy Department by the beautiful 
models of war vessels which we see in the halls. These 
models are toy ships, in all their parts exactly like our 



THE NAVY DEPARTMENT. 



37 



men-of-war, only hundreds of times less in size. By 
looking at the models we can learn something about the 
real war vessels, "and can see just how they work. 

Here, for instance, is a model of the armored cruiser 
New York. The model is so small that you could put it 
in a two-bushel basket ; but the ship it represents is as long 
as a city block, and so wide that it would fill an ordinary 
street. The New York is made almost altogether of iron 
and steel. Its outside is covered with steel plates several 
inches thick, in order that the balls fired at it from other 
ships in a naval battle may not go through it. 

The guns of the New York are of many kinds. Some will 
send a shower of bullets at the enemy, hundreds of balls 
flying forth in a minute. It has cannon of several sizes, 
some of which are so big that it takes two bushels of pow- 
der to fire them, and so powerful that they will send shells 
of solid steel, weighing as much as three full-grown men, 
twelve miles at one shot. The war ships of other nations 
have similar guns, 
and hence you see 
why we must have 
our vessels plated 
with steel to fight 
them. 

There are a num- 




re 



A Modern Coast-defense Rifle. 



ber of these large 

gunboats in our 

navy. There are 

smaller war vessels, 

which will go very fast, and which are known as commerce 

destroyers. There are curious torpedo boats, which can 

travel below the surface of the water and send out bombs 

to explode under the war ships of the enemy and blow 



38 



WASHINGTON. 



them to pieces. There are also models here of some of 
our gunboats known as rams, from the front of each of 
which extends a sharp steel point. Such vessels run at 
full speed against the ships of the enemy, and sink them 
by making holes in their sides. These things show us how 
terrible war is, and we should be glad if our country could 
always be at peace with other nations. 

We see more of such matters during our visit to the War 
Department. This has to do with the army. We must 
have soldiers upon land to defend us as w^ell as ships upon 
the sea, and we need troops in some parts of the United 
States to protect us from the Indians and to keep them in 
order. The United States has but a small number of 
troops in comparison with other nations, for we learn that 
in times of peace only twenty- five 
thousand soldiers are required by our 
great country with its millions of peo- 
ple. We wonder at this, and we ask 
one of the generals why the army is so 
small. 

He replies that the army does not 

give any idea of the strength of the 

American people. He tells us that 

each state has its militia, so that within 

a few hours one hundred thousand 

more men could be ]3ut under arms; 

and he says that the United States, in 

case of a w^ar, has so many people that 

it could furnish more than ten millions 

of fighting men on very short notice. This is far greater 

than any other army in the world, and as we think of it we 

feel very proud of our country's strength. 

Passing now down Pennsylvania Avenue, we visit the 




A Soldier. 



THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT. 



39 



Treasury Department. The Treasury has to do with the 
money of the government. A vast sum is needed to pay 
the salaries of the employees, to carry the mails, and to do 
other kinds of government work. 

The money comes, in part, from the tariff on imports, 
or taxes upon things from foreign lands which are sent 
into this country for sale. When ships arrive at any port 
they are examined by the customs officers of the Treas- 
ury Department, and upon certain kinds of goods a 
tariff, or tax, is collected. This tariff, or tax, is a stated 




_J 



The Treasury Building 



amount for each yard, gallon, or pound of the material, 
or a certain per cent, of the cost of the goods in the land 
from which they have been brought. This amount is 
usually added by the importers to the price asked for the 
goods, so that when we buy them it is ourselves who 
really pay the tax. 

Other taxes come from certain kinds of goods manufac- 
tured in our country. These are known as revenue taxes, 
and are collected only on spirituous liquors, such as whisky, 

CARP. N. AM.— 3 



40 



WASHINGTON. 



brandy, and beer, and upon manufactures of tobacco for 
chewing, smoking, and snuffing. Such taxes are also 
usually added to the cost of the articles taxed, and so the 
people who use them, and not the manufacturers, are really 
the persons who pay. In addition to this, the government 
gets some money from its sales of public lands, from the 
sale of postage stamps, and from various other sources. 

The money is sent to the Treasury Department to be 
kept until needed. There is usually a vast amount of 
money on hand, and we open our eyes wide when the 
guide takes us down into the vaults and shows us how 
millions of dollars' worth of gold and silver are stored there, 

and guarded day and 
night by w^atchmen. 
In other rooms we 
are shown piles of 
crisp new bank notes, 
and see hundreds of 
clerks who are han- 
dling old and new 
paper money. The 
TreasuryDepartment 
makes all of our pa- 
per money. 

The money factory 
is in that large 
brick building which 
we can see 'just be- 
yond the Washington 
Monument. Let us 
visit it. We hear the rattle of the machinery as we enter 
the door, and the guide takes us through room after room 
in which, behind walls of iron latticework, scores of men and 




Interior of the Treasury Vaults. 



THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT. 4 1 

women are busy printing bank notes. The women wear 
aprons over their dresses, and the men work with their 
shirt sleeves rolled up to their shoulders ; for the printing 
is dirty work, and every one we see in the press room is 
spotted with ink. In another place are the engravers, who 
with fine tools are cutting out of steel beautiful pictures 
such as you see upon our bank notes ; and in other places 
there are wonderful engraving machines. 

How carefully everything is guarded ! There are watch- 
men everywhere, and there are steel vaults in which all of 
the plates for making the bank notes are stored every night. 
Not one of the employees can leave the building until every 
note on hand has been counted and until every sheet of 
paper and every printing plate is known to be in its place. 
This is to prevent counterfeiters from getting the plates and 
printing money for themselves. 

As we go through the Bureau of Engraving and Print- 
ing we get some idea of the wealth of our nation by seeing 
the bank notes required for its business. Notes represent- 
ing millions of dollars are printed here in a day. We see 
scores of women who do nothing else but count bank 
notes. How fast they work ! Their fingers go like light- 
ning. They do not move their lips, but they count the 
bills at the rate of a hundred a minute. 

After being counted, the notes are put into a great steel 
box on wheels and are hauled to the Treasury Department. 
From there they are shipped to all parts of the country. 
Our government never sends out a bank note a second 
time. It is always ready to exchange new bills for old 
ones, and old bills are never paid out by the Treasury De- 
partment. 

But what becomes of the old bank notes? 

Come- with me, and I will show you. All the old money 



42 WASHINGTON. 

received at the Treasury is destroyed. The bank notes are 
cut in halves as soon as they come in, and are then carried 
in a clos'ed steel wagon to the basement of this money mill. 

Let us walk down and see what is done with them. The 
cut notes are put into a big round iron pot, in which they 
are ground up by machinery and cooked and steamed until 
they are turned into a pulpy, gruel-like mixture which 
looks like mush. Sometimes as much as two million dol- 
lars' worth of money is ground up at one time. Think of 
a pot of mush made of two million dollars in bank notes! 
Wouldn't you Hke a good bowl of the meal before it is 
thrown into the kettle? There is, however, no chance to 
get at any of this money, for the government grinds up 
the notes in order to prevent any one stealing them and 
using them as money again. 

It is in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing that all 
of our postage stamps are made. The process is much the 
same as that of printing the bank notes, and the postage 
stamps are as carefully watched as the money, that none 
may be lost. After the stamps are printed they are 
gummed by machinery. Then the little holes are cut 
around them by wheels, on somewhat the same principle as 
dough is cut in making animal crackers or gingerbread 
men. 

At the Post Office Department we learn something of 
our vast postal system. There are maps here which show 
the roads over which the government sends the letters and 
papers that are mailed to every part of the United States 
and the world. Some letters must be carried on horse- 
back or in boats, and we learn that the mail routes form 
a great network embracing every part of our country. 

But what are those men and women doing in that office 
there at the side of the hall? They seem to be opening 



THE POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT. 43 

letters not addressed to them nor to the government offi- 
cers. We thought no one had the right to open a letter 
not intended for him. But see ! the clerks here are read- 
ing the letters and putting them in new envelopes for mail- 
ing again ! That is the dead-letter office. When a letter 
is so badly addressed that the postman cannot read the 
writing, or when he cannot find the person to whom it is 
directed, that letter is called dead. 

Such letters are forwarded to the Post Office Department, 
where the clerks open them and, when possible, send them 
back to the writers. There are thousands of such letters 
received every day ; and we learn that some people are so 
careless about their money that more than a million dollars 
is put into the mails every year in letters so badly ad- 
dressed that they go to the dead-letter office. In some 
cases not even the signatures of the writers can be made 
out, and the money and letters are lost to their owners. 

Just across from the Post Office Department is the great 
marble building of the Interior Department. This depart- 
ment has to do with the public lands of the United States, 
with education, with patents, with the pensions paid to our 
soldiers, and various other matters. 

In the Patent Office we see models of the wonderful in- 
ventions made by Americans. The Americans are the 
greatest inventors in the world. It is said that more than 
two fifths of the most important inventions ever made have 
originated in our country, and more than twenty-five thou- 
sand patents for new things are taken out every year. 
These inventions are of all kinds. They range in size from 
pills as big as the head of a pin to balloons almost as large 
as the dome of the Capitol, and in complexity of mechan- 
ism from collar buttons to steam engines. 

It is strange how much some of the little things have 



44 



WASHINGTON. 



paid their inventors. When a thing is patented, no one, 
until after a certain time, can make it without the permis- 
sion of the inv^entor. He can charge what he pleases for 
the right to manufacture it ; and one of the great lessons 
of the Patent Office is that we should not despise the little 
things. The patent for the rubber tip on the end of your 




Interior of the Patent Office. 



pencil, for instance, was worth more than one hundred 
thousand dollars to the man who first thought of it. The 
gimlet-pointed screw brought one inventor a vast sum of 
money, and the man who first thought of putting copper 
tips on the toes of children's shoes grew rich out of that 
idea. The inventor of the roller skate is said to have 
received many hundreds of thousands of dollars from his 



BALTIMORE. 45 

patent. Patents for different kinds of building blocks 
have made their owners much money, and the man who 
invented the return ball with a rubber string attached to 
pull it back received a large income for some time from 
this patent. 

The Interior Department has also charge of the Census 
Bureau. Every ten years men employed by this bureau 
count all the people in our country, and find out all about 
them, so that we here can learn just how many people 
there are in the United States and what they are doing. 

At the Agricultural Department we are shown a room 
filled with glass cases containing every variety of apples, 
peaches, grapes, oranges, pineapples, and many other kinds 
of fruit. They look so dehcious that we feel like eating 
them until we learn that they are made of wax and painted 
to represent fruits. There are also many kinds of nuts 
shown here, and we see specimens of all the things grown 
in our country, from the cotton and tobacco and rich fruits 
of the tropics to the hardiest products of the temperate 
zone. 

V. BALTIMORE AND OUR OYSTER BEDS. 

WE leave Washington this morning, on our way to 
New York. It is only a six hours' ride on the cars 
from one city to the other, but the country through which 
we travel is one of the most thickly populated sections of 
the United States, and we shall pass quite large cities 
every few miles. We reach Baltimore in less than an hour. 
Baltimore is a great commercial center. It is at the head 
of Chesapeake Bay, and we find big ocean steamers at the 
wharves of the city, and see grain, flour, tobacco, and other 



46 



BALTIMORE. 



products taken from the cars and loaded upon ships to be 
carried to Europe, South America, and other countries. 

When Washington city was laid out Baltimore had al- 
ready eight thousand people and was considered one of 
the chief towns of the country. It now contains more than 
half a million of people, and it has so many streets that if 




The Cathedral at Baltimore. 

they were stretched out in one long line they would reach 
almost from New York to Chicago. We visit the cathe- 
dral, the first built in the United States, Druid Hill Park, 
and the Johns Hopkins University. Then we take a look 
at the monument which the Baltimore people have put up 
in honor of Washington. It seems quite small after see- 
ing the huge structure in the national capital. 



CHESAPEAKE BAY — OYSTER FARMS. 47 

We find ourselves quite hungry after our rapid tour 
through the city, and resolve to take a lunch at the station 
before we go on to Philadelphia. 

What shall we eat? 

We order oysters, for Baltimore is the greatest oyster 
market in the United States. More than one third of all 
the oysters of the world are grown in the waters of Chesa- 
peake Bay, and there are in Baltimore many thousand men 
and women who do nothing but take the oysters out of 
their shells in order that they may be shipped in tubs and 
cans to different parts of our country. The Americans eat 
more oysters than are eaten by the people of any other 
nation. From the number that we consume every year, 
a dozen might be given to every man, woman, and child 
on the globe, and there would be still some to spare. 

The oysters shipped from Baltimore are found in the 
shallow waters along the coast of Chesapeake Bay. They 
grow also in some other salt waters of the United States, 
but there are more good oysters in Chesapeake Bay than 
anywhere else. Most of the oysters here grow of them- 
selves ; but there are also oyster farms — places in the bay 
or at the mouths of the rivers where the oyster eggs are 
put, and shells thrown into the water, to which the young 
oysters can fasten themselves and grow shells of their own. 

Oysters grow in this way for four or five years before 
they are big enough to be eaten. The eggs from which 
they are hatched are so small that you cannot see them 
with the naked eye. It is said that one oyster will lay 
more than a million eggs in a season. 

When an oyster is hatched it is as small as the point of 
a fine needle. It looks like a little white dot. It at once 
fastens itself to a piece of stone or shell or anything it can 
find which is hard. It soon gets to be as big as the head 



48 



BALTIMORE. 



of a pin, and so increases in size that when it is a year old 
it is as large as a silver twenty-five-cent piece. After this 
it grows about an inch a year for from four to six years, 
when it is full grown. You can tell how old an oyster is 
by its shell. The layers upon it show the number of years 




Oyster Dredging. 

it has Hved. The shell grows thicker and thicker year 
after year. Shells have been found which were nine inches 
thick, and some scientists claim there are oysters which 
have lived one hundred years. 

The oysters are gathered during the fall and winter by 
men who sail in big boats over the beds where the oysters 
lie. The oystermen have long rakes, which they push 
down into the water and thus drag up the oysters. Some- 
times they use dredges, or great shovels worked by ma- 
chinery, which scoop the oysters out of the bottom of 
the bay. 



OYSTERS. 



49 



But here come our oysters. They are brought in on the 
half-shell, and we see that there are two parts to an oyster 
shell. One part is hollow and the other is flat. In the 
hollow portion lies the liquor which is the Hfe blood of the 
oyster, and if it were not for this it is said the oyster would 
die. At the back of the shell we see the hinges by which 
the two parts are kept together. 

What queer-looking things these oysters are as they lie 
before us on the shells ! They have mouths, but no heads. 
The mouth of the oyster is in the narrowest portion of the 
body. It is merely a hole in the skin, for the oyster has 
neither tongue nor teeth. The mouth has four thin Hps, 
and the oyster gets its food by filtering the water which 
it takes into its mouth through them. It has no nose 
and no eyes ; but scientists say that oysters will close up 
their shells if a shadow passes over the water above them ; 
hence they must have some way of knowing what is going 
on about them. The oyster has lungs and a heart. Its 
stomach is a little bag which lies just behind the mouth. 
As we think of these things we almost hesitate to let the 
oyster slip down our throats. We try one, however. The 
delicious taste takes away our scruples, and we find our- 
selves eating a second dozen before we are satisfied. 




50 



PHILADELPHIA. 




VI. IN PHILADELPHIA — A VISIT TO THE 
MINT. 

AGAR ride of less than three hours brings us from 
Baltimore to Philadelphia. We pass the manufac- 
turing city of Wilmington, Delaware ; and long before we 
reach Philadelphia itself we see great factories, and learn 
that we are in one of our chief manufacturing centers. 
There is only one city in the country which has more 
manufacturing establishments than Phil- 
adelphia, and that is New York. There 
are more than two hundred and sixty 
thousand men and women in Philadel- 
phia who make things to sell. Thou- 
sands are busy weaving woolen cloths 
and making clothing. There are thou- 
sands of men building ships, and our 
„,.,,. „ greatest naval vessels are made here. 

William Penn. =• 

Other thousands are making goods of 
iron and steel; and we learn that the United States has 
become the greatest manufacturing country in the w^orld. 
After our country was first settled the most of tlie peo- 
ple were farmers. They raised things from the soil. As 
more people came, some of them began to make things to 
sell. This has gone on until now one man out of every 
five in the United States is engaged in manufacturing. 
We have now twelve times as many factories as we had 
forty years ago, and a vast amount of money is spent every 
year in paying the wages of the men who work in them. 
If we could see all the workmen of the world, we should 
learn that our people are better fed, and better clothed, 
and have better houses than those of any other nation. 



\ ■ 



MANUFACTURES. 



51 



We find this especially so in Philadelphia. We walk for 
miles through long streets of small but neat houses made 
of red brick with steps of white marble. There are thou- 
sands of such houses here belonging to the working peo- 
ple, and it is said that more people own their own homes 
in Philadelphia than in any other large city of the world. 

But why has Philadelphia become a great manufacturing 
city? 

One reason is because it is so situated that materials can 
be cheaply brought to it and the manufactured goods 
shipped from it to other parts of the United States. The 
slopes of the Appala- 
chian range are such 
that railroads have been 
built from Philadelphia 
through the passes of 
the Alleghany Moun- 
tains, thus giving it an 
easy road to the lands 
farther west. It is also 
a seaport, although it is 
one hundred miles from 
the Atlantic Ocean. 
Large steamships can 
sail up Delaware Bay to 
Philadelphia, bringing 
the materials people 
want to use in their 
shops, and carrying 
their manufactures to 
all parts of the world. The Schuylkill River furnishes 
Philadelphia with water power for manufacturing purposes, 
and the city Hes so near the coal lands of Pennsylvania that 




Independence Hall. 



52 



PHILADELPHIA. 



the fuel for steam power costs very little. Not far from 
it are the largest beds of anthracite coal to be found any- 
where. This coal makes a great heat and is very valuable 
for manufacturing. It is so hard that people for a long 
time did not think it would burn, one noted man saying 
that if the world were burned up this would be the very 
last thing that would catch fire. 

Philadelphia is one of the oldest cities in this country ; it 
was founded by the Quakers under William Penn ; and for 
ten years, from 1790 to 1800, it was the capital of the 
United States. 




City Hall, Philadelphia. 



We visit Independence Hall, where the Declaration of 
Independence was signed. Then we walk through the 
city hall, one of the largest and most beautiful buildings in 



FRANKLIN — THE MINT. 53 

the United States. Upon its tower there is a bronze statue 
of Penn which was made by Philadelphia workmen, and is 
one of the largest statues in the world. It does not seem 
very big as we look at it from the ground, but it is really 
as tall as a three-story house, and the buttons on the coat 
are half a foot across. 

During our tour through the city we stop for a moment 
at the grave of Benjamin Franklin. It is in the little grave- 
yard of Christ Church, in the midst of the hum and hurry 
of the busy city, and is marked by a plain 
marble slab. It was in Philadelphia that 
Benjamin Franklin lived the greater part 
of his life. He was born in Boston, and 
learned there the trade of a printer. He 
came to Philadelphia as a boy to find 
work, and his first meal in the city was 
made of a loaf of bread which he bought 
and ate as he walked through the streets. 
He afterwards became a great man and Benjamin Franklin. 
was of much service to the United States. 

When Franklin first came here, Philadelphia was larger 
than New York. It was the biggest city in the United 
States until the Erie Canal was built. This made New 
York grow so fast that she soon got ahead of Philadelphia, 
and Philadelphia is now smaller than either New York or 
Chicago. It has, however, more than a million people, 
and it has many beautiful buildings. 

We visit the mint, where most of our gold, silver, and 
copper money is made. There are several other mints in 
the United States, but the Philadelphia mint is the oldest. 
It was founded during the presidency of George Washing- 
ton, and it coins millions of dollars' worth of gold and sil- 
ver every year. It is situated in the heart of Philadelphia, 




54 



PHILADELPHIA. 



not far from the city hall. There are guards at the door, 
and visitors are carefully watched as they are taken from 
room to room and shown the processes of coining money. 
During our tour the superintendent of the mint goes 
w^th us. He takes us down into the vaults and show^s us 
where the gold and silver metal and coin are stored away. 




Interior of Money Vaults, Philadelphia Mint. 



In one vault we see millions of silver dollars tied up in 
bags, and stacked up against the wall like so much corn. 
In a smaller vault we are shown piles of gold bricks. 
They are laid up in regular order in different parts of the 
vault. They are, as a rule, about the size of a cake of 
kitchen soap, and they do not look very heavy. 

The superintendent asks us to lift one of them, and we 



THE MINT. 55 

find our backs almost broken by the effort to raise it. 
Each brick weighs forty pounds, or as much as a six-year- 
old boy. In other vaults we are shown quantities of silver 
bullion, the bricks of which are larger and heavier than 
those of the gold vaults, and we learn that from these gold 
and silver bricks our money is made. 

In going through the mint we are taken into a room 
where they are melting the gold, and the superintendent 
shows us how copper and other metals are put with it into 
the melting pot, in order that the money may be harder 
and wear better. The gold we saw in the bricks was so 
soft that we could scratch it with our finger nails. It was 
pure gold, and the superintendent tells us that coins made 
of pure gold would soon w^ear away, and that a pure gold 
wedding ring would hardly outlast the honeymoon. 

The gold bricks, having been melted, are cast into 
ingots. Ingots are long gold wedges. They are about as 
wide as a twenty- dollar gold piece, and are a little more 
than a foot long and two inches thick. It is from them 
that the gold coins are made. 

As we go on into the silver-melting room we see that 
the silver for the silver dollars is also cast into strips of the 
same kind. We see a man wheehng a box of these silver 
ingots out of the room, and follow him along the hall to 
see the ingots made into dollars. We still have the idea 
that our coins are made by casting, the gold and silver 
being melted and turned into molds just as in the making 
of bullets, save that, when the molds are opened, out drop 
gold dollars and silver dollars instead of balls of lead. 

We soon find, however, that our coins are not made in 
that way. They are stamped out of cold metal, and ma- 
chines with an enormous pressure put upon their faces the 
beautiful images of the goddess of liberty and the Ameri- 

CARP. N. AM.— 4 



56 



PHILADELPHIA. 



can eagle. The silver ingots are first rolled between cyl- 
inders of steel so graduated that the ingots grow thinner 
and thinner as they are pulled through them, until they are 
at last just a little wider and about as thick as a silver dol- 
lar. They have been so stretched out by the process 
that they are like long bands of hoop iron rather than 
like chisels or wedges. These bands or strips are now 
run under a vertical steel punch which cuts out of them 
round pieces of silver of just the size of a dollar. These 

are the blanks of which 
the dollars are to be 
made. 

It is very important 
that each coin should 
have the right amount 
of silver in it, so each 
blank is weighed before 
it is stamped. After 
weighing it is taken 
down into the basement 
of the mint, and, with 
thousands of other 
blanks, is shoveled into 
a vat of acid, which 
soon eats the dirt off of 
it. It is then dried and 
taken upstairs to be 
coined. 

The coining is done 

by what is known as the 

coining machine. The silver blanks are fed through a long 

tube into a machine which drops them between two dies. 

The upper die bears the picture of the goddess of liberty, 




A Coining- Machine. 



NEW YORK. 



57 



and the lower that of the American eagle and the lettering 
which you find on the silver dollar. As the coin lies there 
the two dies come together, exerting an enormous pres- 
sure, and stamping the beautiful impressions which you 
see on our silver coins. 

Gold coins are made in the same way, and pennies are 
manufactured by the thousands in much the same manner. 

Leaving the mint, we take a run out to Fairmount Park, 
where the Centennial Exhibition was held, to have a look 
at the Zoological Garden. We visit Girard College, which 
was founded by a rich man for the education of poor 
boys ; and then, after a meal at the magnificent railroad 
station at Broad Street, we take the train for New York. 




3>#<C 



VII. NEW YORK AND SOME OF ITS 
WONDERS. 



IN coming from Philadelphia to New York, the railroad 
train brings us only to the banks of the Hudson 
River at Jersey City. Here we step from the cars into a 
ferry boat, so big that it could not be squeezed into the 
average city street. It has enormous steam engines upon 



58 



NEW YORK. 




■msg- --1, 



A Ferryboat. 



it, which push it through the water, and there are dozens 
of carts and wagons, and hundreds of men, women, and 
children with us as ferry passengers. We are soon across 

the river ; the bell rings as we 
^ come to the wharf, and we are 

^'. landed on the island of Manhat- 

tan, in the busiest part of New 
York. 

We are now in the biggest city 
of our hemisphere. New York 
contains more than three millions 
of people, and it is, with the ex- 
"^^^^'"'^ * ception of London, the largest 

city on the globe. It is hard for 
us to realize how big New York 
is. It grows upon us at every step as we travel through 
it. We ask for a hotel, and hardly know which one to 
choose when we find that there are so many in New York 
that we could lodge in a different 
place every night for more than i|-, 

three years without going out of 
the city. 

The business sections are so 
crowded with street cars, wagons, 
and carts that we have to ask a 
policeman to help us from one side 
of the street to the other. We see 
policemen at nearly every street 
corner. They are dressed in blue 
uniforms, and have silver badges 
on the breasts of their coats. With a motion of their hands 
to the drivers they hold back the wagons for us, and we 
learn that it takes thousands of such men to keep order 




A New York Policeman. 



A GREAT COMMERCIAL CITY. 59 

here. At first we determine to see the whole city, but 
find that it has so many streets that it would take weeks 
for us to walk through them, and we give up the plan in 
despair. 

But before we go on, let us stop a moment and think 
just where New York is ; for it is its situation that has 
made it so great. The main portion of the city is on the 
island of Manhattan, at the mouth of the Hudson River. 
But it also includes a portion of the mainland north of 
Manhattan, the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn on 
Long Island, and the whole of Staten Island. New York 
Bay, which is partly inclosed by the city, is one of the 
best and largest harbors in the world. 

The easiest and cheapest route from the sea to the inte- 
rior of the United States begins at New York. This route 
is by the Mohawk Valley, through which the Mohawk 
River flows into the Hudson. Some of our greatest rail- 
roads are built through this low valley. The slope of the 
route over the Appalachian highlands is so slight that 
freight has to be lifted much less upon it than upon the 
routes across the mountains farther south. It is for this 
reason that goods can be sent more cheaply from the East 
and from Europe to the interior of our country by way of 
New York than by any other route. New York is also 
connected with the Great Lakes by the Hudson River and 
the Erie Canal, so that the vast farming regions of the 
United States lying about and beyond these lakes can send 
their crops by water to New York to be shipped to Europe. 

The island of Manhattan is less than fourteen miles long, 
and so narrow that you could walk from one side of it to 
the other at almost any point in less than an hour. Its 
form makes you think of a poorly laid-out baseball ground. 
It is in the shape of an irregular diamond, squeezed in 



6o 



NEW YORK. 



between two rivers, its lowermost point extending out into 
New York Bay. 

It is at the lower part of this island that we land. The 
ground here is so valuable that you w^ould have to cover 
it with gold dollars to buy it. This island is now one 
of the most valuable pieces of prop- 
erty in the world, and it is safe to 
say that the gold mines of the whole 
world could not in one yearproduce 
money enough to purchase it. 

What do you think the Indians 
got for it? 

They sold it for twenty-four dol- 
lars. They did not think it worth 
much, for it was hard to get at with 
their little canoes. So when some 
men from Holland came to Amer- 
ica, not quite three hundred years 
ago, and built a fort here, they 
found the Indians not unwilling to 
sell. The savages did not then know what money meant, 
and they took their pay in a lot of beads, buttons, and other 
small trinkets. 

The Dutchmen from Holland built a little town upon the 
island and called it New Amsterdam. It kept that name 
until the place was taken by the English, when it was 
named New York. It was already the second city of the 
United States at the time the Declaration of Independence 
was signed. After the Erie Canal was opened, however. 
New York grew so rapidly that it soon became bigger than 
any other of our cities, and it has been the chief American 
city from then until now. It will probably, in the course 
of a few years, be the largest city on the globe. 




Manhattan Island. 



BROADWAY. 



6i 



We spend some time on Broadway. This is the main 
business street of New York. It is one of the Hveliest and 
noisiest streets in the world. What a crush and jam there is 
everywhere ! Every one is on the rush, and we are jostled 
and pushed this way and that as we join the hurrying 
crowd. The sidew^alks are fairly black with men, women, 
and children, who 
are moving along, 
paying no attention 
to any one but 
themselves. The 
roadway is blocked 
with moving cars 
and wagons, the 
drivers of which are 
scolding at one an- 
other. 

How very high 
the buildings are! 
They are so tall 
that you could not 
shoot an arrow up 
to their roofs. 
Some are from 
twelve to twenty 
and even twenty- 
five stories high, 

and in some single buildings in New York there are more 
men doing business than there are people in a large coun- 
try village. 

These big office buildings are furnished like palaces. 
You walk through them upon floors of marble. Numerous 
elevators are moving up and down from one story to an- 




A Scene on Broadway. 



62 NEW YORK. 

Other, carrying the hundreds of people. Some of the 
buildings have post offices in them. They have boot- 
blacks' rooms and barber shops, and many have restaurants 
in the topmost story, higher than the spire of the tallest 
church steeple. 

Everything is business here. Upon all sides of us there 
are great wholesale establishments. There are stores 

everywhere. There are 
even stores in the base- 
ments; and as we go 
through the side streets 
we find that thousands 
of people of New York 
work in cellars, making 
all kinds.of goods under- 
ground. 

We walk up Broad- 
_ way past the City Hall 

I^^J-S 1/ ^ i (* ^ I fe}' '.^f* some of the big news- 

paper buildings stand, 
and then turn and go 
back a few blocks down 
the street until we come 

Trinity Church. 

to Trinity Church, one of 
the oldest and most beautiful buildings in the United States. 
It is made of brownstone, and there is a large churchyard 
about it, in which are the tombstones of some of the most 
famous Americans of the past. The churchyard is a 
beautiful place filled with flowers and trees, and it seems 
strangely peaceful in contrast with the pushing throng on 
Broadway. 

We enter, and stand for a moment by the tomb of 







TRINITY CHURCHYARD. 



63 



Robert Fulton. He was the man who made the Clermont, 
the first steamboat that sailed on the Hudson River. 
The Clermont made its first trip from New York to Albany 
in 1807. Its voyage proved that the steamship could be 

made a commercial 

success, and Rob- 
ert Fulton may be 
called the father of 
the thousands of 
steamships which 
now come to New 
York every year. 

Near him in the 
old churchyard lies 
Capt. James Law- 
rence, the hero of 
the frigate Chesa- 
peake, whose famous 
" Don't give up the 
Ship " immortal- 
ized his memory ; 
and at the lower 
end of the yard we 
see the white marble 
monument under which lie the remains of Alexander 
Hamilton, one of the founders of our government, who 
was shot by Aaron Burr in a duel. 

Leaving the churchyard, we cross Broadway and take 
a walk down one of the most wonderful streets in the 
world. We are in Wall Street, and all about us are the 
buildings which contain the offices of the men who own 
and control much of the wealth of the United States. 

Wall Street may be called the money capital of our 



B 




Hb^BIi^ Tfflit^ mB 




^mpfi 


^^■^j.js^S|| 


i^^^ 


^^Hl 



Wall Street. 



64 NEW YORK. 

country. The greatest of our railroads are managed from 
here. Here is the Stock Exchange, where all kinds of 
stocks are bought and sold. By stocks, you know, are 
meant shares in different business companies, such as rail- 
roads, steamships, telegraphs, and telephones. The prices 
of stocks sometimes change very quickly for a variety of 
reasons, and men make and lose fortunes in buying and 
seUing them. It is in the Stock Exchange that such busi- 
ness is done. 

We are admitted to the gallery of the building, and we 
look down upon one of the most curious sights in the 
world. In the big room below us there are hundreds of 
well-dressed men, some with hats on, and some with none, 
running to and fro, pulling and yeUing at one another. 
They are the bankers and brokers who are the members of 
the exchange. It costs each of them twenty thousand 
dollars for the privilege of buying and selling here. Each 
has a little notebook in one hand and a pencil in the other, 
and with these he jots down his purchases and sales. 
Telegraph boys rush in and out through the crowd, and 
the sight makes us think of a lot of madmen rather than 
a body of sensible people. An enormous business is done, 
and billions of dollars change hands on that floor every 
year. 

Near by we find the Produce Exchange, where grain of 
all kinds is bought and sold. New York is one of the chief 
grain markets of the world, and in this exchange wheat, 
corn, and oats are not sold by the bushel, but by the 
thousands of bushels. The smallest amount you can buy 
or sell is five thousand bushels, and so much changes hands 
that millions of bushels are often bought in one day. We 
next visit the Cotton Exchange, where men buy and sell 
cotton in large quantities ; and our heads fairly swim as 



OUR FOREIGN COMMERCE. 



65 



we try to understand the vast sums which it takes to man- 
age the business of this one city of our country. 

We are, in fact, anxious to get out of the bustle, and we 
walk down a side street to rest our eyes and ears before 
taking the Broadway cable cars to make our way farther 
uptown to the hotel where we shall stop overnight. 



^^^c 



VIII. OUR FOREIGN COMMERCE. 

THE largest hotels of New York are in the middle of 
the island of Manhattan, several miles above the 
point where we first reached Broadway. The one in which 
we stay overnight is 
not far from Madison 
Square, and when we 
start out in the morn- 
ing we are in the heart 
of one of the great 
shopping districts. 
Broadway is here al- 
most as busy as it 
is down at Trinity 
Church, and the side 
streets leading to it 
are so lined with store 
windows that passing 
through them is like 
goingthrough a huge 
museum walled with 
glass cases. 

Goods of all kinds Hotel Waldorf-Astoria. New York. 




66 NEW YORK. 

are here spread out before us, and we see that every nation 
of the world has sent its products to New York for sale. 
Those bright- colored silks over there came from China. 
They were woven on rude looms by yellow-skinned, slant- 
eyed men and women upon the banks of the Yangtze 
Kiang. They were brought to America on a steamship 
through the Indian Ocean, by way of the Red Sea and 
the Suez Canal. They crossed the Mediterranean, passed 
through the Strait of Gibraltar, and thence to New York. 
Those rich velvets and laces were carried over the Atlan- 
tic Ocean from Europe ; and those large diamonds which 
you see in that jewelry store were dug by black-skinned, 
half-naked men in the mines of South Africa. 

There is a tea store which is supplied by the bushes 
which grow on the Himalaya Mountains in northern India 
and by the tea gardens of Japan and China. Next to it 
is a shop where you can buy coffee from Brazil and sugar 
from Cuba. That toy store has many French dolls, and 
curious mechanical playthings which were made in the 
mountains of Germany ; and that tiger-skin rug which you 
see in the window next door once coveied the body of a 
beast that prowled through the jungles of northern Hindu- 
stan. There are other things all about us from every part 
of the world, and we resolve to go to the wharves and see 
the great ships which bring these things into our country. 

We walk down Twenty-third Street, and take a ride 
through the air to the lower part of the island. The city, 
though narrow, is so long, and the streets are so crowded, 
that it takes the horse cars and cable cars a long time to 
go from one end of it to the other. In order to make the 
journey more quickly elevated roads have been built over 
some of the avenues. Upon these roads trains of cars are 
drawn by locomotives almost as rapidly as on an ordinary 



THE ELEVATED RAILROAD. 



67 



railway. The railroad tracks are supported by iron col- 
umns which extend to the height of the second- or third- 
story windows. 

We have to walk upstairs to get to the cars, and we find 
ticket offices and news stands on the elevated platforms. 
Our tickets cost us five cents apiece. We drop them in 




Elevated Railroad on the Bowery, New York. 

the box at the door of the station, and rush for the cars. 
As we step aboard, the guard closes the iron gates at the 
side of the car platform, and the train begins to move. 

The cars have windows like those of a street car, and we 
can see into the upper stories of the houses as we fly 
alon^ the street. Here women are washing clothes, 
there they are cooking ; here we go by a shop where tail- 



68 



NEW YORK. 



ors are working, and there we pass buildings given up to 
manufacturing. 

New York has more factories than any other city in the 
country. It has hundreds of thousands of people who do 
nothing but make things to sell ; and if every man, woman, 
and child in the United States would throw six dollars into 
a pile they would not, all together, give enough to buy the 
goods which New York makes in one year. 




Wharves, East Shore of Manhattan. 



But here we are at the wharves. What a crush and jam 
there is all about us! We ask policemen to help us across 
the streets through the crowds of wagons, carts, and 
trucks loaded with goods on their way to the boats. We 
walk for miles past great docks, upon each of which 



DOCKS AND WHARVES. 69 

there are enormous long sheds filled with bales, boxes, 
and barrels, and in which scores of men are at work load- 
ing and unloading vessels. 

New York has more than twenty-five miles of water 
front on Manhattan Island alone, and there are also long 
lines of wharves and landing places on the Long Island 
shores. More than half of all that is bought of foreign 
nations by the United States comes here. 

Our imports consist, with the exception of a few things 
that cannot well be raised in America, almost altogether of 
manufactured articles. We are the greatest manufactur- 
ing nation of the world, but our factories are not yet nu- 
merous enough to supply all our needs, and so we import 
much from other countries. The amount of money we 
spend for goods bought in this way is so great that if it 
were divided among all of our people, every man, woman, 
and child of us would get ten dollars' worth every year, 
and there would be some to spare. 

Nearly half of all that we sell to other countries Is car- 
ried out on ships which sail from New York, and we here 
get some idea of our foreign commerce. 

More than three thousand steamships come from foreign 
countries to these v/harves every year. There are thou- 
sands of sailing vessels, and a procession of steamers is al- 
ways moving back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, 
carrying our goods to the people of Europe and bringing 
their goods to us. 

The most that we sell comes from our farms. We 
raise more farm products than we can use, and the 
United States is to a large extent a big country store for 
the European nations. Every year two thousand ships 
laden with grain sail out of New York. The steamers have 
their holds filled with grain in bulk, and between the decks 



70 NEW YORK. 

the wheat is piled up in bags. Such vessels are loaded 
very quickly, and almost half a miUion bushels of grain can 
be packed away in a ship in an hour. Vast amounts of 
meat and other provisions are sent across the Atlantic every 
week, and millions of dollars' worth of cattle are carried 
away to be killed in Europe for the people there. 

The people of both Europe and Asia send to this big 
country store for a large part of the oil which they use 
in their lamps. Our petroleum is carried over all the 
oceans. It is shipped from New York, Baltimore, Phila- 
delphia, and other places, in what are known as tank 
steamers, a single one of which will hold as much as thirty 
thousand barrels of coal oil. These steamers are divided 
into a half-dozen or more huge tanks. The oil is pumped 
into the tanks, and it remains there in bulk until it is again 
pumped out upon the wharves of the great ports of Europe, 
Asia, and Africa. 

It is in vessels of the same kind that molasses is brought to 
the United States from Cuba. Think of the biggest house 
you have ever seen as one soHd box, and let it be filled 
with molasses, and you may get some idea of the sweet- 
ness which, protected only by a thin sheet of steel, is thus 
carried through the salt waters of the ocean. 

We visit ships at the wharves which are loaded with 
cotton. This comes from the cotton fields of our southern 
states, and is carried in bundles or bales to Europe and 
Asia to be made into cloth. We sell more than twice as 
much raw cotton every year to otlier countries as we do 
wheat and flour. Cotton is, in fact, the most valuable of 
all the articles which the rest of the world buys in our store. 
We sell about two thirds of all the cotton we raise, and we 
sometimes get as much as two hundred million dollars for 
it from Europe in a year. We learn that we sell more 



OCEAN GREYHOUNDS. 



71 



goods abroad than we buy, and that in some years the 
other nations of the world pay us many milHon dollars more 
than we pay them. 

Our chief trade is with Europe. The English are our 
best customers. We sell them large quantities of raw cot- 
ton, breadstuffs, and meats, for which we get several times 
as much as we pay for the manufactured articles which 
they sell to us. 

The fastest steamers in the world are those which go 
between Europe and America. Some steamships cross the 




An Ocean Greyhound — Kaiser Wilhehn der Grosse. 



Atlantic in less than six days, and they go so swiftly that 
they have been called the ocean greyhounds. We visit 
one of these steamers, which has just arrived at the wharf, 
and find parts of it fitted up like a parlor. It has large 



CARP. N. AM. 



72 NEW YORK. 

dining rooms, sitting rooms, bedrooms, and bathrooms, 
and we see that people can Hve quite as well now upon the 
water as upon the land. We look at the enormous en- 
gines, as strong as twenty thousand horses, which drive 
the huge ship through the water, and we are surprised 
when told that its furnaces use up every da}^ as much coal 
as would heat thirty large dweUing houses for a whole year. 

Away down in the lower part of the ship we find what is 
known as the steerage. This part is not so well furnished. 
It is full of poor people who have come from Europe across 
the Atlantic to our country. Such people do not land at 
this wharf. They are carried to the landing place of the 
Department of Immigration near the lower end of Man- 
hattan Island, where officers of the government examine 
them to see if they are likely to become good citizens of the 
United States. We are glad to have persons from all parts 
of the world come here to live and help develop our lands, 
but we do not wish to bring in among us those who are 
unable or too lazy to work, and who are likely to go into 
our poorhouses to live. So the government has provided 
that all poor people coming into New York must be 
examined before they can land. If they have no money 
whatever, and seem to be worthless, they are sent back to 
Europe ; but otherwise they are permitted to stay. 

For years the poor people from all parts of Europe 
have been coming to America, because they can make 
more money and live better here than at home. Since 
1820 it is estimated that more than fifteen millions of such 
people have arrived on our shores, and in 1890 almost one 
half of our inhabitants were either born in other countries 
or were the children of people born there. 

We visit the place where these immigrants land. Here 
we find ourselves surrounded by hundreds of odd-looking 



STATUE OF LIBERTY. 



73 



men, women, and children. Very few of the women wear 
bonnets, and many of the men have caps or queerly shaped 
hats. There are many EngHsh and Irish, and a large num- 
ber of Germans. There are dark-faced Italians, and long- 
bearded Jews from Russia and Poland. There are people 
from Norway and Sweden, and we see boys from Holland, 
who wear wooden shoes. Every person has his baggage 
with him, and some sit on piles 
of bedding which they have 
broughtfrom their homes. They 
seem strangely out of place ; but 
as we look at them we realize 
that they are strong and able to 
work, and that the most of them 
in a short time will be good 
American citizens. 

We take a boat and sail over 
to Bedloes Island, in the harbor, 
to see the magnificent statue of 
Liberty Enlightening the World. 
This statue is intended to show 
every one who comes into New York that this is a free 
country where the people rule themselves and where all 
the world can learn to be free. The statue is as high as a 
very tall church steeple. We get some idea of its size 
when we learn that forty men have stood inside its head 
at one time, and that its forefinger is so long that it would 
reach from the floor to the ceiling of an average room, 
and so big around that the hoop of a flour barrel would 
just about fit it if used as a ring. 

As we leave the statue and go back to New York we 
have a fine view of the Brooklyn Bridge, which unites that 
part of New York known as Brooklyn with Manhattan 







^l^^Kl^^^^ii: 



Liberty Enlightening the World. 



74 



NEW YORK. 



Island. This Is one of the most wonderful bridges ever 
made. It is an immense structure of stone and steel, 
more than a mile in length, crossing the water way called 
East River. The bridge cost more than the Capitol at 
Washington, and one of the most interesting things about 
it is the story of how it was built. It was designed by 




The Brooklyn Bridge. 



John A. Roebling, who died before it was begun. His 
son took up the work, and after thirteen years it was 
completed. The young man worked so hard in superin- 
tending the building of the bridge that he broke down in 
health, and the doctors refused to permit him to go out of 
the house. This was after he had worked only three 
years. Still he superintended the work to the end. 



CENTRAL PARK. 



75 



He took a house on Columbia Heights, not far from the 
bridge, and with windows looking out upon it. Here from 
his sick room with a telescope he watched the builders day 
by day and hour by hour for ten years as they built the 
bridge, sending his orders as to just how everything should 
be done, and superintending the work almost as well as 
though he had been on the spot 




A View in Central Park. 



We close our day by a visit to Central Park, the great 
playground for the boys and girls of Manhattan Island. It 
is full of interesting and beautiful things, and is one of the 
finest and most famous parks in the world. Prospect Park, 
on the Brooklyn side of East River, is another delightful 
pleasure ground, but we cannot visit it now. After an- 
other restful night at our hotel, we take the elevated road 
for the Grand Central Railroad Station, where we board a 
train for New England. 



76 NEW ENGLAND. 



IX. NEW ENGLAND — COMMERCE AND 
MANUFACTURES. 

NEW ENGLAND is made up of six of the smallest 
states of the Union. The New England states, 
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode 
Island, and Connecticut, taken together, are smaller than 
either Kansas, Minnesota, or Nebraska. They are not half 
as big as California, and but little more than one quarter the 
size of Texas. It would take nearly thirty Connecticuts to 
cover Montana, and two hundred Rhode Islands to be as 
big as Texas. 

The soil of New England is such that its people can 
make more money in other ways than by farming. A 
large part of the land is mountainous. The Appalachian 
mountain chain runs through it, and the only very fertile 
spots are to be found in the valleys of the rivers and in 
the narrow strip of Atlantic plain which runs around 
the coast. A large part of Maine is covered with forests 
and lakes, and much of the land in other New England 
states is so stony that it can be used only for the raising 
of cattle and sheep. More than half the food consumed 
in this part of our country comes from the Mississippi 
Valley. The New England winters are long and cold, 
and the ground is often covered with snow for months at 
a time. 

You would think that this would be one of the poorest 
parts of the United States, that few people could live there, 
and that those who manage to exist would have very little 
money indeed. 

Now the truth is. New England has vast wealth and a 
great population. The southern portion of it is the most 



MANUFACTURES. ^1 

thickly settled part of our country. There is no other 
state which has so many people in proportion to its size 
as Rhode Island. Connecticut and Massachusetts have 
hundreds of cities and villages. There are few places in 
the world where the people live so well. The people of 
New England have, in fact, more money than those of any 
other section of the same size in the United States ; and 
Massachusetts has enough wealth to buy some of the 
Western states that are ten times larger. 

How does this come to pass? New England has no 
great gold, silver, or iron mines, and it has no large coal 
fields like those of Pennsylvania. 

The secret of it is in manufactures and commerce. The 
steep mountains which seem so poor to us are one of the 
great sources of the riches of New England. The moun- 
tains lie near the sea. They have many small rivers and 
streams flowing rapidly down them, which give great 
water power just at the places where ships can most 
cheaply bring the materials for manufacturing, and from 
where the goods made can be easily sent to all parts of the 
world. This has led men to build factories along all these 
streams. Water power is the cheapest of all kinds of 
power. A Httle stream will often do the work of a hun- 
dred horses. A great part of our manufacturing is done 
by water power. Indeed, it is estimated that we have so 
much power of this kind in our country that if we used 
the whole of it, it would be stronger than two hundred 
million horses all pulling at once. 

The people of New England learned very early that it 
was hard to get a living from the soil. They began to 
manufacture for others, and soon found they could earn 
more money in that way than by farming. They became 
very skillful, so that they could make goods cheaply and 



78 



NEW ENGLAND. 



well. As our country grew they built more and more 
factories. They found that they could bring in coal at 
slight cost from Pennsylvania, and there are now factories 
in most parts of New England which are run by steam, in 
addition to those run by water. 

It is wonderful how many things are made in New Eng- 
land. Nearly every one of us has something upon us 
which came from there More than half of all the cotton 




Interior of a Cotton Factory. 



goods in the United States is woven in New England fac- 
tories. There are vast mills which make ginghams, mus- 
lins, and calicoes out of the woolly fiber of the cotton plant 
from our southern states. 

The enormous water power of the Merrimac and other 
rivers has built up great cities, such as Nashua and Man- 
chester in New Hampshire ; Lowell, Lawrence, and Fall 
River in Massachusetts ; and Pawtucket and Providence in 



COTTON AND WOOLEN MILLS. 79 

Rhode Island. These cities are largely devoted to mak- 
ing cottons. Lowell makes more cotton cloth than any 
other place in the United States. It makes, indeed, so 
much every year that if it could be woven in one strip 
a yard wide, the strip would reach from Boston to San 
Francisco. There are also many cotton factories in the 
South, and we are told that factories are now being built 
close to the plantations upon which the cotton is grown. 

A large part of the woolen goods of the United States 
is made in New England. The first woolen mill in Amer- 
ica was started in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1788; and 
when President George Washington was inaugurated, in 
1789, he wore a suit of clothes made of cloth woven in 
this mill. 

So many of our boots and shoes are made in Massachu- 
setts that fully one half of the people of the United States 
may be said to have a part of Massachusetts under their 
feet. Connecticut not only tells us when to get up in the 
morning, for it makes the most of our clocks, but it also 
helps us to dress, for its factories produce tons of buttons, 
millions upon millions of hooks and eyes, and the most of 
the pins which fasten our clothes. 

In Massachusetts are some of the biggest paper mills in 
this country. There are large factories in Rhode Island 
which make beautiful jewelry, and in Connecticut there are 
many places where knives, nails, and all kinds of hardware 
are manufactured. 

It is in this region that we can learn all about watches. 
In southern New England we find hundreds of men and 
women working on timepieces. The simplest of watches 
have only fifty-four parts ; the more expensive ones have 
several times this number; and we can learn a lesson in 
being exact by noticing the care with which every part has 



8o NEW ENGLAND. 

to be made. In the finer watches there are steel screws so 
small that they look like grains of sand. It would take 
three hundred thousand of them to weigh a pound. 

As we go through the factories we see that, after all, 
steam and water do only a small part of the work of manu- 
facturing. It takes a great many men and women to run 
the machines and to do certain kinds of work. Some parts 
of a watch are so small that it costs more than ten thou- 
sand dollars in wages to turn a pound of steel into them. 
We are shown hair springs which cost so much to make 
that it is said that seventy- five cents' worth of iron ore, 
after being turned into such springs, is worth four hundred 
thousand dollars. Of this less than one dollar would be 
for the ore, and the most of the remainder would be paid 
to the men who do the work. By this you can see how 
manufacturing supports a vast population. 

Another great source of New England's wealth is its 
commerce. If you will look at the coast of Maine you 
will see that its shores run in and out almost like the teeth 
of a saw. It is called the ** State of One Hundred Har- 
bors." There are many fine harbors in Massachusetts, and 
there are good landing places for ships all along the south 
coast of New England almost to New York. 

What do you think would be the business of a people 
with such a coast? 

There would be much shipping and many sailors. The 
boys, hearing the sea captains tell their adventures, would 
want to go to sea and become captains too. Well, this is 
just what has happened. There are more than twelve 
thousand men from Maine who are sailors. During my 
travels in Asia I found a Massachusetts sea captain com- 
manding a steamer on a Chinese river, and there are New 
England sailing vessels everywhere. This part of our 



COMMERCE. 



8i 



country has now a large foreign commerce. Boston has 
ships from all parts of the world in its harbors, and a great 
quantity of the American goods which are shipped to Eu- 
rope and other countries is first sent to Boston. 




View of Boston Harbor. 

New England is now covered with railroads. On the 
Fitchburg road, which crosses the Hoosac Mountains, 
there is a tunnel more than four miles long. This is one 
of the longest tunnels in the world. It aids in bringing 
Boston into direct communication with Chicago and the 
Mississippi Valley, and causes much of our wheat and other 
products to be brought to Boston to be sent across the 
Atlantic. There are parts of New England where the 
railroads are more numerousthan in any other portion of our 
country. They cover its lower states like a net, and in 
travehng over them we pass an almost endless procession 



82 NEW ENGLAND. 

of freight trains carrying their loads to or from the many 
harbors along the coast. 

Have you ever thought what a large part commerce has 
in our daily life? It has to do with every meal that we 
eat. At our hotel in New York we sat down to dinner 
before a mahogany table made from trees grown in the 
West Indies. Our tablecloth was woven from Irish flax, 
and our knives and forks were of steel made of iron which 
was dragged from the mines of Lake Superior, hundreds 
of miles to the westward. We drank coffee which had 
been imported from the East Indies or Arabia. The 
sugar we put into it came from the cane fields of Cuba or 
Louisiana. We had a splendid cut of roast beef which six 
months ago was part of an animal galloping madly over 
some western prairie with a cowboy behind him. We 
sprinkled it with salt from the salt wells of Michigan, and 
seasoned it with pepper which grew on the island of Singa- 
pore, on the other side of the world. Our bread was made 
of wheat which was ground into flour at Minneapolis and 
came down the Great Lakes to be used in New York. 
The mince pie which was brought in for dessert was filled 
with currants from Greece, while the three-cornered cream 
nuts with which we finished our meal were shaken from 
trees in the forests of Brazil. 

We thus see how commerce and manufactures every- 
where go hand in hand. The factories of New England 
use a vast deal of stuff which is brought here by ships 
from Asia, Europe, and South America, and we can find 
things from other parts of the world in almost every fac- 
tory. 

Let us visit one of the shoemaking establishments of 
Lynn, Massachusetts. Some of the leather was imported 
from Russia; some of it came in the shape of hides from 



SHOE SHOPS AT LYNN. 



83 



the cattle of the South American pampas, and some from 
those on the plains of Texas. We see skins here which 
have just arrived from France, Germany, or England, and 
some which were shipped from India, China, or the penin- 
sula of Korea. 

It is in turning the skins into leather that manufacture 
first joins hands with commerce. The skins, when they 




Interior of a Shoe Shop, Lynn. 



land in New England, are much as they were when they 
came from the backs of the animals. They have to be 
tanned before they can be used. They are soaked for a 
long time in vats of water filled with tan bark brought 
from one of the forest regions of our country ; next they 



84 NEW ENGLAND. 

are scoured and dried, then greased in order to make them 
soft, and then covered with blacking, — so that a single 
skin has to be handled hundreds of times before it is ready 
to be made into shoes. The nails, buttons, and strings 
used in shoemaking are made in different factories and 
from materials which come from different locahties. 

By machinery and by working together men can make 
things more quickly and at a much less cost than when 
one man did all the work with his hands. In the shoe 
shops of our forefathers one man made the whole shoe, 
and he probably thought he was doing well if he could 
make a shoe in a day. There are machines in the shops 
of Lynn that will sew six hundred pairs of shoes in a 
day, and some that will put pegs into the soles at the 
rate of nine hundred pegs a minute. We find that each 
part of the shoe is made by a different machine, and that 
one man works day after day making certain parts only. 
All kinds of manufacturing are done in this way. It 
takes many, many men to make a piece of cloth ; and 
if we should go to Springfield, Massachusetts, where there 
is a large rifle factory, we might see guns being made 
which have hundreds of different parts, each of which is 
made by a different man. 



3^«^C 



X. AMONG THE MOUNTAINS AND LAKES 
OF NEW ENGLAND. 

WE shall spend a part of to-day among the mountains 
of New England. The Appalachian mountain 
range, which begins in the northern part of Alabama and 
forms the eastern rim of the great Mississippi and St. 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 85 

Lawrence basins, runs northward through New England 
and on into Canada. This mountain chain is made up of 
many ranges, some of which are parallel with one another. 
With its valleys, it occupies a space almost one hundred 
miles wide. The highest portions of it are found in North 
Carolina, but its most picturesque regions are in New 




The White Mountains. 

England. The White Mountains of New Hampshire are 
so beautiful that that state has been called the Switzerland 
of America by travelers who have seen the Alps. 

The highest of the White Mountains is Mount Washing- 
ton. We can go in an ordinary train to the foot of this 
mountain, and from there can ride to its summit over one 
of the oddest little railroads in the world. The mountain 




86 NEW ENGLAND. 

is more than a mile high, and this little railroad goes right 
up to its top. In some places the track is so steep that it 
looks more like a ladder than a railroad, and the cars which 
go up it are at times at such an angle that you would think 
they would slide to the bottom. 

This is prevented by the way the railroad is built. It 
has three rails instead of two, and the rail in the center 
consists of two bars of iron, with connecting crosspieces 

placed four inches 
apart throughout its 
whole length. The 
little locomotive has 
wheels which rest on 
the outer rails, and 
'">. '^, * " also a wheel with cogs 

Railroad up Mount Washing^ton. which fit mtO this 

central rail, the cogs 
moving upon the crosspieces. The wheel is kept from 
running backward by a wrought-iron catch, so that if any 
part of the machinery gives way the steam engine can 
be immediately stopped. The little car in which we ride 
is in front of the engine, and the engine pushes rather than 
pulls us upward into the clouds. 

Upon fine days, such as the one we have for our jour- 
ney, the car windows are open, so that we can see almost 
as well as though we sat in a carriage. We sit with our 
backs to the summit, looking down the mountain ; and as 
we rise we can see masses of vapor nestling in the sides of 
the hills below us. Nearer the top we pass through clouds 
of mist, and are told that there are many times when the 
summit of Mount Washington is hidden in clouds. 

At last the sun clears the sky, and we enjoy the mag- 
nificent views to be had all about us. We can see the 



THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. 87 

other mountains of the Presidential Range. There are 
Mount Adams, Mount Jefferson, and Mount Madison, all 
of which are more than a mile high ; and near them are 
lesser mountains, named after Presidents Monroe and 
Jackson. From the summit we can see into Canada, and 
away off in the distance lies Mount Katahdin in Maine. 

There is a large hotel on the summit of Mount Washing- 
ton, and we may travel through the Green Mountains in 
Vermont, the Catskills and the Adi- 
rondacks in New York, and about ^ ^ , :/ 
through the beautiful hills and lakes \ •, |\ ^\) /^ 
of Maine, and find good places at \' \'' ^ // 
which to stop in each region. These 
mountains during the summer are ( 
filled with people from the lowlands, 
who come here to get away from the ' 

heat and enjoy the pure air and beau- j ^ \ 

tiful scenery. Maine has vast forests , "^H 

of pine and other trees, in which ^>«^ 

there are still deer and bears, and /^ -Vv 

there is good shooting in many parts \^\ 

of New Hampshire and Vermont. 

We can have good fishing almost 
anywhere in the northern parts of ^^ 

New England. There are trout 
streams in the mountains, and Maine -^jtlT- 

has hundreds of lakes in which there ' , -" ^' '*^ """' 

are salmon and other fine fish. New Trout Fishing. 

England, in fact, supplies a large 

amount of the fish of the United States, though the most 
of the fish which are exported are caught in salt water. 

All along the coast there are thousands of men and boys 
who do nothing else but catch fish for a livelihood. Some 

CARP. N. A.M.— 6 



88 



NEW ENGLAND. 



have fishing vessels, In which they go far away from home 
to what are known as the banks of Newfoundland. They 
catch millions of dollars' worth of fish every year, and 
bring them to the United States for sale. 

In our travels through the mountains we shall see what- 
wealth New England has in its hills. We know that the 
streams which flow rapidly down them supply the water 

power which moves 
many of the factories 
in the lowlands. The 
mountains also furnish 
other things of great 
value, although they 
have no great beds of 
coal and iron, such as 
are found in the Ap- 
palachian chain farther 
south. 

The stone of New 
England is worth a great 
deal of money. We find 
vast quarries in which 
granite, one of the hard- 
est stones, is being blast- 
ed out with dynamite 
and cut into blocks, to be shipped to all parts of our coun- 
try. Many of our cities are paved with granite blocks which 
have come from New England, and some of our build- 
ings are made of granite. Beautiful marble is found in 
some parts of New England, and in fact almost half of the 
marble used in our country comes from Vermont, though 
much fine marble is now being quarried in Tennessee and 
Georgia. 




A Granite Quarry. 



THE QUARRIES. 89 

In our visits to the quarries of Vermont we see that 
much more care is used in getting out marble than in 
quarrying granite. The rough blocks of marble are cut 
by means of sand and what might be called a sand saw. 
The saw is merely a long strip of steel. A little groove 
is cut in the stone, and this is filled with a very hard sand. 
Then the strip of steel is moved back and forth on the 
stone by machinery, so that it rubs the sand in the crack 
against the marble, and the sand does the cutting. After 
the stones have been sawed into the proper shapes they 
are carefully smoothed and polished, and are then ready 
for shipment. 

But what kind of stone is of most use to a schoolboy? 

Marble? No; this is chiefly for mantels, tables, tomb- 
stones, ornamental buildings, and other such things. 

Granite? No; granite is used for building and other 
purposes where a strong and beautiful stone is required. 

The stone which is used every day in many schools is 
slate. A large part of the slate comes from New England, 
although a great deal is quarried in Pennsylvania and else- 
where. Slate can be easily split into the thin sheets which 
are used for making slate roofs, and these sheets need very 
little preparation other than splitting and trimming. In 
making school slates the sheets have to be smoothed by rub- 
bing them with sand and emery powder. A great many 
school slates are manufactured at Bangor, Maine, and we 
can there see boys and girls attending to machines which 
may have made the very slates that you are now using. 

But there is another article made in New England which 
every boy and girl is glad to get. This is the maple sugar 
of Vermont. Maple sugar comes from the sap of the 
maple tree. The sap is gathered in the spring, after the 
first thaw, at which time it begins to move in the trees. 



90 



NEW ENGLAND. 



Holes are then bored in the trees not far above the 
ground, and Httle wooden tubes called spiles are driven 
into them. Soon the sap begins to flow. It oozes from 
the trees into the spiles, and drop by drop it falls into 
buckets that are hung beneath them or placed at the foot 
of the trees. As the drops hang on the end of the spile 




Collecting Sugar Water — Vermont. 



they look just like water. Catch one of them upon your 
finger and taste it. It is sweet, and the water in the 
bucket is called sugar water. 

After the buckets are filled, which occurs perhaps once or 
twice a day, the sugar water is carried to the sugar house, 
where it is put in large kettles to be boiled. The sugar 
water grows thicker and thicker as the boiling goes on, until 
after a time it becomes a thin molasses and then a thick 
sirup. It is then poured into molds, and in a short time 
turns to sugar. 



BOSTON. 91 



XL IN BOSTON. 



WE have no trouble in getting to Boston. It is the 
largest and wealthiest city of the northeastern sec- 
tion of our country. There are railroads to it from all parts 
of New England. It lies on one of the finest harbors of 
the Atlantic coast. It is so situated that it forms the best 
port for shipping the goods made in New England to other 
countries by sea, and one of the best points for shipping 
our farming products and other things to Europe. 

Boston stands next to New York in the amount of its 
foreign commerce. Its good harbor allows the materials 
for manufacturing to be brought in so cheaply that it has 
become a great manufacturing city. There are almost a 
hundred thousand persons working in its factories. It has 
more than half a million inhabitants, and it is so surrounded 
by villages in which people live who do business in Boston 
that within fifteen miles of its center there are now living 
more than a million people. 

As we walk through the business portions of Boston the 
crowds seem even greater than they were in New York. 
The streets here are narrow and crooked ; the buildings are 
high ; and some parts of the business section between 
Washington Street and Boston Common have so many 
people that the buildings make us think of enormous boxes 
divided into compartments packed with men carrying on 
different kinds of work. 

We spend some time in Boston Common. This is a 
beautiful park in the heart of the city. Until about fifty 
years ago, when Central Park was laid out, Boston Com- 
mon was the finest park in the United States. It is shaded 
by hundreds of old elm trees, and at one side of it there is 



92 



BOSTON. 



a great oblong building whose golden dome may be seen 
from almost every part of Boston. This is the statehouse, 
where the governor of Massachusetts has his offices and 
the legislature meets every year to make laws for the state. 
In the center of Boston Common is the Frog Pond, about 
which the Boston boys play in the summer. 




Boston Common. 



In our tour through the city we pass other fine parks, 
and learn that outside of the business portion there are 
many wide and beautiful streets. Commonwealth Avenue, 
for instance, is about one hundred feet wider than Penn- 
sylvania Avenue in Washington, and through its center 
runs a park of trees, among which are footpaths. There 
are fine residences on both sides of the avenue, and at 



CAMBRIDGE. 



93 



night, when the street is Hghted with four rows of lamps 
and the carriages of rich Bostonians are flying to and fro 
upon it, it presents one of the finest sights of the world. 

Boston people are noted for their learning and culture. 
There are many large book stores and publishing houses 
here, and the city has many libraries and museums. It 




Scollay Square, Boston. 



has musical, scientific, and other kinds of schools; and in 
Cambridge, one of its suburbs, we visit Harvard Univer- 
sity, which is one of the largest colleges in the United 
States. It has more than three hundred teach-ers, and in 
its different departments there are more than three thou- 
sand students. Harvard is our oldest college. It was 
founded more than two hundred years ago, and more than 



94 



BOSTON. 




Harvard Gateway. 



olutlon. 



sixty years before Yale College was founded at New- 
Haven, Connecticut. Yale and Harvard were for a long 

time the most fa- 



mous colleges of our 
country; but to- 
day there are good 
schools and colleges 
in almost every part 
of the United States. 
It was in Cam- 
bridge that General 
Washington first 
took command of 
the army of the Rev- 
This was on the 3d of July, 1775. Boston was 
then in the hands of the British, and General Washington 
besieged it. We can visit Dor- 
chester Heights, where Wash- 
ington put his cannon during 
the last of the siege. From 
these heights he could fire 
upon the city and at the ships 
in the harbor, and he thus 
forced the British to leave. 

New England people have 
always been noted for their 
bravery. Everywhere in Bos- 
ton we see things which re- 
mind us of the stirring times 
of the past, when it took some 
courage to be a true Ameri- 
can citizen. Let us take a street car and ride out to the 
Bunker Hill Monument. It stands on the site where the 





Bunker Hill Monument 



THE BOSTON TEA PARTY. 95 

Americans fought the British so bravely before Washing- 
ton came. This section of Boston is now thickly settled, 
but the monument marks the place of the battle. It is a 
shaft of granite, the corner stone of which was laid by 
General Lafayette in 1825. There are steps inside of it 
by which we can walk to the top and look over the city. 
On the ground below us we see the statue of Colonel Wil- 
liam Prescott, who commanded the Americans that day. It 
represents him as he looked when the English were com- 
ing, and when he held back his men until they could do 
the most damage, saying: "Don't fire till I tell you! 
Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes!" 

Later on, as we walk along the wharves of the harbor, 
we think of the famous Boston tea party. We remember 
how fifty Boston men and boys, disguised as Indians, ran 
yelling down to these wharves, and boarding the English 
ships which were loaded with tea for America, emptied the 
chests of tea into the water. 

The English government had said that Americans must 
pay taxes upon their tea, but the Americans claimed that 
the English had no right to tax them without their consent. 
Hence they refused to drink tea, or to wear any kind of 
goods from England upon which they had to pay taxes. 
They decided to dress in clothes made in America, and 
began to drink tea of sage, sassafras roots, and other 
American plants. 

When the English people heard how their tea had been 
destroyed in Boston, they became very angry, and the 
English Parliament said that no more ships should come 
into the Boston harbor until the city paid for the tea. This 
caused great trouble in Boston, and it aided in bringing on 
the Revolutionary War. To-day England is very glad to 
send goods to Boston without any tax. Into this same 



96 



BOSTON. 



harbor, which was then closed, now come much of the 
goods which our people buy of England, and out of it 
go vast quantities of products which they 
sell to her. 

We next visit the old North Church, in 
the steeple of which the lanterns were 
hung that night when the British soldiers 
started out to march against the Ameri- 
cans at Lexington and Concord. These 
lanterns were to tell Paul Revere, who 
stood on the opposite shore, that the Brit- 
ish were coming, and that he should ride 
and warn the Americans to be ready to 
fight them. The ride is described in 
Longfellow's poem. It tells how Paul 
Revere, booted and spurred, stood by his 
horse and watched this church steeple 
until at last he saw the two lights burn- 
ing which showed him that the British 
It describes how he sprang to his saddle, 




Old North Church. 



were commg. 

and then there was 



' A hurry of hoofs in the village street, 
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark, 
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark 
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet; 
That was all ! and yet through the gleam and the light 
The fate of a nation was riding that night; 
And the spark struck out by that steed in its flight 
Kindled the land into flame with its heat. . . . 
You know the rest. In the books you have read 
How the British regulars fired and fled, — 
How the farmers gave them ball for ball, 
From behind each fence and farmyard wall; 
Chasing the redcoats down the lane, 
Then crossing the field to emerge again 



PAUL REVERE. 



97 



Under the trees at the turn of the road, 
And only pausing to fire and load. 




" So through the night rode Paul Revere; 
And so through the night went his cry of alarm 
To every Middlesex village and farm, — 
A cry of defiance and not of fear, 
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door, 
And a word that shall echo forevermore ! 
For, borne on the night wind of the past, 
Through all our history, to the last. 
In the hour of darkness and peril and need 
The people shall waken and listen to hear 
The hurrying hoof beats of that steed. 
And the midnight message of Paul Revere." 

The story of early New England is made up of fights 
with the Indians and fights with the British. Nearly all 
the ground over which we have traveled has been fought 
for again and again. 



98 



NEW ENGLAND. 



There are many places about Boston which will always 
be noted in the history of our country. Plymouth, 
where the Pilgrims landed after they crossed the ocean 
in the Mayflower, is only thirty miles away. We reach 
it by railroad in little more than an hour. It is now a 
beautiful little city of about eight thousand people, and 
as we look at its comfortable homes we cannot realize the 
hardships our forefathers suffered during their first winter 
in New England. 

The Mayflower came into the harbor at Plymouth on a 
cold December day in the year 1620. She had just one 
hundred passengers. They had been driven from Eng- 
land to Holland on account of their religion, and they had 

now come to America that they 
might be able to worship God in 
their own way. They stepped 
from their boat upon a great 
stone, which has become famous 
as Plymouth Rock. This rock 
is now honored by all New Eng- 
land people, and we find it in 
Plymouth under a canopy of 
dressed stone, and notice that 
the figures 1620 have been cut 
upon its side. 

From the time of their land- 
ing, the Pilgrims were in fear 
of the Indians. They had no 
houses at first, and in the rude huts which they put up 
they suffered such privations that more than half of them 
died within less than a year. 

We find many relics of these times in Pilgrim Hall. 
Here is the very sword which Miles Standish, the sol- 




Plymouth Rock. 



SOUTH BY STEAMER. 99 

dier of the colony, used in his fights with the Indians, 
and, what is even more interesting, the cradle in which the 
first white child born in New England was rocked. This 
cradle is a little wicker affair with rockers of wood. It is 
much like a basket with a sort of hood at the back. As 
we look we think of poor little Peregrine White — for that 
was the little boy's name — crying in it all alone, and 
can hardly realize how our country has grown when we 
are told that there are now more than two million babies 
born in the United States every year. 



y)^c 



XII. FROM NEW ENGLAND SOUTH BY 
STEAMER. 

WE leave New England to-day. We are bound for 
the lands of the sun. There are good steamers 
from Boston to all our southern ports, and we take ship 
for Norfolk, Virginia. We steam out of 
Boston harbor, and sail about Cape Cod, 
down the Atlantic coast, past New Jer- 
sey, Delaware, and Maryland, to the 
mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Much of 
the time we are out of sight of land, 
and it is about two days before we see 
the lights of Cape Charles, and steam 
over what is known as Hampton Roads n , ■ i x. ^ -.u 

•T Captain John bmith. 

to the mouth of the James River. 

Here on our left is the thriving seaport of Norfolk, and 
upon our right Old Point Comfort, w^here Captain John 
Smith landed with his party from England when he first 
arrived in America in 1607, thirteen years before Plymouth 




lOO VIRGINIA. 

was founded. Captain John Smith stopped for a time 
upon this point, near where the httle town of Hampton 
now is, before he sailed up the James River to found 
Jamestown. 

It was at Hampton that Captain John Smith had his 
first meeting with the Indians. There are Indians at 
Hampton now, and we find them more friendly than those 
who greeted John Smith. Our Indians are far different 
from the half-naked redskins, with paint on their bodies 
and feathers on their heads, who roamed through America 
when the English colonists first came. The Indians we 
see belong to the large Indian college at Hampton which 
is supported by our government. Here Indian boys and 
girls from many of the savage tribes of the West come to 
school. They dress as we do, and learn to speak and read 
and write English. The boys are taught trades ; the girls 
are taught to cook and sew and keep house, and all learn 
how to lead civilized lives. 

The air is warmer at Hampton than it is in New Eng- 
land. We see other plants growing, and there are many 
things about us which show us that we are in a different 
part of our country. 

What a great number of colored people are here ! 

More than half of the folks we meet in our drives are 
colored. We are now in Virginia, the lands of which, 
like those of the states farther south, once composed 
large farms or plantations, worked by negroes as slaves. 
These people belong to a dilTerent race from the whites. 
The first of them were brought by force from Africa to 
America to be used as slaves. They remained in slavery 
until they were freed during the great Civil War between 
the North and the South. After the war was over nearly 
all the colored people remained in the South. In some 



NORFOLK. lOI 

southern states, such as South Carolina and Mississippi, 
there are now more colored people than whites, and, in- 
deed, there are so many of them that they make up about 
one tenth of all the people of the United States. 

Our colored people are, as a rule, good citizens. Some of 
them now own farms. Many send their children to school, 
and we find colored boys and girls who are being educated 
at Hampton College with the Indians. They are anxious 
to learn, and some of them are bright students. 

But let me tell you an interesting thing about Norfolk. 
You may know that it has a good harbor, for it is at the 
mouth of the James River, and large steamships can come 
to its wharves. You may have heard that many millions 
of oysters are brought here in the shell from the beds at 
the mouths of the rivers which flow into Chesapeake Bay, 
and that they are here shucked and shipped to the mar- 
kets all over the country. 

These are not the things I want to tell you about. It 
is about the peanuts. Norfolk is the chief peanut market 
in the United States. From here tons of peanuts are sent 
out every year, and we may see peanut fields all about 
Norfolk, and also in other parts of Virginia, and in North 
Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. 

When we think that peanuts are usually sold in small 
quantities, at five cents a pint, we can hardly believe that 
the peanut crop can be of much value. Still, this is the 
case. There are so many pints of peanuts sold every year 
that altogether they make up about four million bushels, 
and a good crop sometimes brings as much as ten million 
dollars. 

Many of our peanuts are shipped from Norfolk to Eu- 
rope. There they are put into presses, and the oil is 
squeezed out of them by heavy machinery. Peanut oil 



02 



VIRGINIA. 



is used by some people in Europe for salads, and for 
other things, in which it takes the place of olive oil. 
But how do you think peanuts are raised ? 
They do not grow upon trees, nor are they found on 
bushes. They grow underground, and might be called 
ground pease. They are planted just like vegetables or 
corn. The peanuts are first shelled, the farmers being 

careful not to break the 
little red skins on the ker- 
nels. It takes about two 
bushels of nuts in the 
shell to furnish the seed 
for an acre, and an acre 
planted with peanuts will 
produce, according to the 
richness of the soil, from 
twenty to one hundred 
bushels of nuts. 

The nuts are planted 
in hills or are drilled in 
rows, much like potatoes. 
They are plowed and 
hoed to keep down the 
weeds. The planting is 
done in May. Soon the 
little green vines peep forth from the ground. They spread 
out over the hills, sending out little stalks on which the 
flowers grow. These with the seed pods finally run down 
into the soil where the seeds ripen into peanuts. 

In the fall the peanuts are ripe. They are then dug up. 
The vines are pulled out, and after the dirt is shaken off 
they are stacked about poles seven feet high, with the 
nuts hanging to them. About two weeks after this the 




A Peanut Vine. 



•JAMESTOWN. 



103 



nuts are picked from the vines by women and children, 
who are paid so much a bushel. 

The nuts are still covered with dirt, and the next proc- 
ess is cleaning. This is done by machines much like the 
windmills used by farmers for cleaning grain. After clean- 
ing, the nuts are sorted by colored women and children, 
who pick out the bad ones as the nuts pass by them on a 
moving belt about a yard 
wide. The peanuts are 
now ready for market. 
They are put into bags 
and shipped to all parts 
of the world. 

From Norfolk we take 
the steamer which sails 
up the James River daily 
to Richmond, the capital 
of Virginia. The James 
is very wide for some dis- 
tance from its mouth. 
The lands along its banks 
are low, and the soil 
seems good. As we look 
at the rich farms on both 
sides of us, we can ima- 
gine how happy Captain John Smith and his company 
felt as they sailed over this same river now almost three 
hundred years ago. We have traveled but a few hours 
before we reach the point where they stopped and began 
building what they thought was to be the great city of the 
New World. 

This was Jamestown, or, as they called it, James City. 
It was the chief town of Virginia when Virginia included 

CARP. N. AM.— 7 




wm 



\' 



Tower at Jamestown. 



104 VIRGINIA. 

all the land on our eastern coast from Maine to Georgia. 
New England was called North Virginia at first, and it 
was not until Captain John Smith visited it later on that 
it was named New England. 

There is nothing like a city now at Jamestown. All 
that was left when I visited it a year or so ago was the 
ruined ivy-covered tower of the church. This stood upon 
an island in the river. The waters, I could see, were fast 
eating away the banks of the island, and it must soon all 
disappear. Not a man was in sight. The only sign of 
life about the ruins was a cow, which was eating grass near 
by ; and the only sound I heard from the mainland, as we 
sailed past, was the croaking of a frog that was peeping 
out of the water by the bank. 

The Jamestown colony had indeed a much worse time 
than the Plymouth colony. The Indians fought them. 
The redskins hid themselves in the woods about the little 
settlement and for a long time killed every one who ven- 
tured out. They besieged Jamestown, so that at one time 
the colonists could get nothing to eat. During this time 
they ate dogs and horses and all sorts of reptiles, such as 
snakes and toads. This was when the colony had grown 
to the extent of five hundred by the landing of more ships 
from England. The time was known as the Starving 
Time ; and when it ended with the arrival of a shipload of 
provisions, only sixty out of the five hundred were alive. 

You would think that with such troubles the English 
would have given up trying to settle America. The col- 
onists found no gold as they had been told they would. 
They saw, however, that the land was rich, and as time 
went on they found that there was much money to be 
made in the raising of tobacco. 

We do not think it is good for men to use tobacco. 




Natural Bridge, Virginis 



TOBACCO. 105 

Still this plant has had a part in the history of our country. 
It is to-day one of our most valuable crops, and we decide 
to go south from Richmond to visit some of the plantations 
and learn how it is raised. 

No one in Europe knew anything about tobacco until 
Columbus discovered America. The tobacco plant was 
first found on our hemisphere, and one of the most won- 
derful stories which the explorers told, when they returned 
to Europe in those early days, was how the Indians ate 
fire and breathed smoke out of their nostrils. Many of the 
travelers learned to smoke as the Indians did, using pipes, 
and blowing out the smoke through their noses. They 
introduced the custom into Europe, and tobacco-smoking 
became fashionable among the ladies and gentlemen of 
that time. 

Sir Walter Raleigh was one of the first smokers in 
England. One day, it is said, when he was smoking his 
pipe a servant came in with a pitcher of ale in his hand. 
This man had never heard of tobacco, and when he saw 
the smoke coming out of Raleigh's nose he thought his 
master was burning up, and threw the ale over him to put 
the fire out. Raleigh had sent several expeditions to 
America, and Ralph Lane, the captain of one of these, 
brought some tobacco home with him. 

As the custom of tobacco-using grew, tobacco became 
very valuable. It was long the chief crop of Virginia. 
At one time the colonists used it as money, so that a man 
could take pieces of tobacco to the store to buy sugar and 
tea and other things for his table. 

We now sell vast quantities of tobacco every year to the 
people of Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America. 
More of this article is produced in our country than in any 
other. Our tobacco crop is sometimes worth as much as 



io6 



VIRGINIA. 



forty million dollars, and the largest part of it is used in 
other lands. 

Tobacco is now raised in almost every one of our states 
and territories, but the chief tobacco lands are in Ken- 
tucky, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The 




Tobacco Field. 



climate and soil in parts of these states seem to be just 
fitted for raising tobacco, and we see tobacco fields every- 
where as we ride along the southern boundary of Virginia 
and into North Carolina. The leaves of the tobacco plant 
are much like cabbage leaves, but they are longer and 
smoother and of a dark-green color. The stalks on 
which the leaves grow are as big around as our thumbs, 
and some are so tall that if we stripped off the leaves we 
could use them for canes. 



RAISING TOBACCO. 



107 



It is by no means an easy thing to raise tobacco. The 
seed must first be planted in a sort of hotbed or plant bed. 
This bed is made by covering a piece of ground with 
wood, and burning it, so that all the insects, vegetable 
matter, and seeds in the ground are cooked out. After 
this the bed is manured. Then the seeds are sown, and a 




Tobacco Auction. 



wide sheet of very thin cloth is spread out above the bed 
to keep in the heat and keep out the insects. 

How big do you think a tobacco seed is? 

It is so little that you could put a million of them in 
your pocket. It is not bigger than a mustard seed, and 
one ounce of tobacco seed contains, it is said, three hun- 
dred and forty thousand seeds. The seeds are so small 
that they have to be mixed with ashes or dirt before 
planting, in order that they may not be too thickly sown. 



I08 THE SOUTH. 

The planting is done in the spring. After a short time 
the Httle green tobacco sprouts come up, looking much like 
cabbage plants. They are now taken up and set out in 
hills, four thousand plants to the acre. They are carefully 
cultivated throughout the summer and are harvested in the 
fall. As the plants ripen the leaves become yellow. At 
this time the tobacco farmer cuts the stalks off close to 
the earth and hangs them on sticks which are stuck in 
the ground. In some places the farmers strip the leaves 
from the stalks and string them on wire. 

The leaves must now be dried and cured before they 
can be sold. All of the moisture must be taken out of 
them. This is done in what are known as tobacco barns. 
We see these barns on nearly every little farm as we ride 
through the tobacco lands. They are usually wooden 
cabins without windows. In each of them there is a heat- 
ing arrangement consisting of a stove with flues or pipes 
which run through the barn. The tobacco is hung up in 
the barn, and the place is kept as hot as an oven, day and 
night, until the tobacco is thoroughly cured. The leaves 
are then tied up in little bundles and carried to market. 
Much of the tobacco is sent to the factories in the United 
States to be prepared for smoking and chewing, and for 
making cigars and cigarettes. 



"^tC^^^^^ 



THE COTTON BELT. 



109 



XIII. IN THE LAND OF COTTON. 




The Cotton Belt. 



LEAVING the tobacco lands, we move on farther south, 
^ and soon find ourselves in the great cotton belt of the 
United States. This begins in North and South Carolina 
and runs down through Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, 
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. There is a little cotton 
raised in some other 
states, but these states 
produce the greater 
part of our crop, Texas 
producing the most. 

Do you realize how 
important the cotton 
crop of our country is? 

It is so valuable that 
if all the gold dug in 

one year from all the mines on the earth were put in one 
pile, and that part of our cotton crop which we send each 
year to Europe were stacked up beside it in another, the 
cotton pile would be worth the most. 

We often get more than twice as much from our cotton 
fields as from our gold and silver mines. We raise the 
best cotton in the world, and about two thirds of all the 
cotton clothes worn by men is made of the woolly fiber 
from our plantations. There are yellow-skinned people 
in Asia, black-skinned people in Africa, red-skinned In- 
dians in South America, and white-skinned people in Eu- 
rope all dressed in our cottons, and every one of us wears 
more or less cotton cloth. We do our sewing with thread 
that comes from this plant. Our common dresses and 



no THE SOUTH. 

shirts are made from It, and we sleep at night between 
sheets the material of which was once fluffy cotton. 

But why does America produce so much more cotton 
than any other country? 

It is because our soil and climate are best fitted for it. 
Cotton requires a warm chmate with not too much mois- 
ture. This is found in our cotton belt, and the best place 
of all for cotton is on the string of islands which lies off 
the Atlantic coast in the states of South Carolina and 
Georgia. Upon these islands grows what is known as the 
sea-island cotton. The plants here are four or five times as 
large as those in other parts of our country. The ripe cot- 
ton upon them shines like satin, and it is made up of fibers 
which are longer than those of any other cotton. There 
is some cotton in Egypt which is almost as good as the 
sea-island cotton, but there is not much of it in compar- 
ison with the vast amount produced every year in America. 

Have you ever seen a cotton field ? 

A field of ripening cotton forms one of the most beau- 
tiful sights in the world. There are acres of bushes, some 
of which are as high as your waist, and on all of them are 
white bunches of cotton which look like soft balls of snow. 

We pass many such fields in our travels. They line 
both sides of the railroads. Some of them are dotted with 
people who are picking the cotton. Negroes and whites 
walk through the rows and pull the soft white lint from 
the bushes. The pickers sing as they work, and their rich, 
soft voices float Into the car windows as we ride by. 

At many of the stations there are huge packages or bales 
of cotton ready to be shipped to the factories of New 
England or those of othfer parts of the country. Some are 
to go to the seaports, where they will be rebaled and 
shipped off to Europe. Every little farmhouse we pass 



HOW COTTON GROWS. 



Ill 



has one or more bales in its yard. Upon the country 
roads we see wagons filled with what in the distance looks 
like newly washed wool, but what is really freshly picked 
cotton. It is being carried to the gin, where the seeds 
must be taken out before the cotton can be sold. 

But let us stop and visit one of the big cotton plantations 
of South Carolina. There is a field which is not yet ripe. 
It is filled with green bushes just about as large as currant 




Picking Cotton. 

bushes, upon which are the green bolls containing the 
cotton. The largest bolls are about the size of a walnut 
with the hull on it. Farther over we can see a field in 
which some of the bolls are cracking open, and the green 
bushes seem dusted with white. These bolls are almost 
ripe, and the cotton will soon be ready for picking. 

Look farther over. There is a spot where the land 
must be richer, for the bolls on the lower branches are all 
open, and -great tufts of white, as large as pop-corn balls. 



112 



THE SOUTH. 



hang out as if ready to drop into the hands of the pickers. 
But the bolls on the higher branches are still closed. 

Let us go into that ripening field and examine the cot- 
ton. Pull some bunches of white from the bolls. How 
easily they come out, and how soft and clean the stuff 
is! What are those hard little things we feel inside the 

white wool ? Let us 
pick apart the cot- 
ton and see. Those 
are the cotton seeds. 
They are as big as 
the seeds of a lemon, 
and they must all be 
gotten out before the 
cotton can be sold. 
We shall see how this 
is done later on. 

It is from seeds 
like these that the 
cotton bushes grow. 
We ask the planter 
how cotton is raised, 




Cotton Bales Ready for Shipping'. 



and he tells us that his crop was planted in April, in rows of 
httle hills about four feet apart. He describes how the 
sprouts soon came through the soil, and how by the middle 
of June this field was filled with green bushes upon which 
were many beautiful flowers. The blossoms of the cotton 
plant look a little like roses. On first opening, they are 
white ; the next day they are red, and as you look over a 
cotton field in blossom you seem to see acres of beautiful 
roses. Soon the blossoms drop off and the bolls of cotton 
appear. The bolls do not crack open until they are ripe, 
and then the beautiful white fibers show out. 



BALING COTTON. II3 

From what we have seen we know that the plants do 
not all ripen at once. The pickers have to go over a field 
many times. The picking season in the far South and in 
Texas begins in July and lasts four weeks. Farther north 
it begins later, and in Georgia and South Carolina some 
of the cotton is often still on the bushes at Christmas. 

After the cotton is picked it is carried in wagons to the 
gin. There goes such a wagonload now. Let us jump 
up into the wagon and go along with it. The negro 
driver is very good-natured, and he laughs loudly as we 
sink up to our necks in the fleecy white cotton. At the 
ginhouse we crawl out, covered with lint, and look on as 
the cotton is thrown into the top of a machine so that it 
falls between fine circular saws so arranged that the seeds 
will just pass betw^een them. The cotton is caught by the 
teeth of the saws, while the seeds drop below. 

Between the saws there are stiff brushes which pull the 
cotton out of the saw teeth and roll it out in a beautiful, 
fleecy sheet, so that it drops on the floor on one side of 
the gin looking like a great drift of snow. 

The cotton is now ready for baling. By this is meant 
putting it in such bundles that it may not take up much 
space on the cars or in the ships upon which it is to be 
carried to the markets. This is done by great pressing 
machines, which squeeze the cotton together so that a 
great quantity of it is put into a package about four feet 
square and five feet in length. It is next wrapped in 
rough cloth much like coffee sacking, and is bound with 
bands of hoop iron. The ordinary bale weighs from four 
hundred and fifty to five hundred pounds, and is worth 
from thirty to forty dollars, though its price may vary 
above or below this, according to the size of the crop of 
cotton raised in different parts of the world. 



114 



THE SOUTH. 



But what becomes of the cotton seed? 

This is very carefully saved. It is so valuable that it is 
estimated that the cotton seed raised in America is worth 
more than one hundred million dollars a year. A few 
years ago it was not supposed to be worth anything, and 
it was burned or thrown away as useless. Now the seeds 




Baling Cotton. 

are saved for the making of oil and other things. They 
have a great deal of oil in them. They are first ground, 
and the oil is then squeezed out in great presses. 

Cotton-seed oil is largely used for the making of soap. 
Much of it goes into certain kinds of patent butters, such 
as oleomargarine, and a large part of it, when purified, is 
used for cooking, for salads, and for other things where it 



COTTON FACTORIES. II5 

takes the place of olive oil. Indeed, it is said that a large 
percentage of the olive oil sold in the United States is 
really cotton-seed oil. Many of the laborers who work in 
the cotton-seed-oil mills do not butter the bread which 
they take with them for their lunches. They use the oil 
in place of butter, putting the slices cut from the loaf 
under the press, where the sweet, warm, fresh oil is tric- 
kling out, and then eating them with a relish. 

But let us follow the cotton wool still further, and see 
how it is made into cloth. Until within recent years all 
of our great cotton factories were in New England. We 
saw many at Lowell, Fall River, Manchester, Lawrence, 
and other cities as we passed through, and we know that 
the most of our cotton is still made there. We find, how- 
ever, that many great factories are now being built in the 
South. There are large factories at Charlotte in North 
Carolina, at Spartanburg, Greenville, and Columbia in 
South Carolina, also at Atlanta and Augusta in Georgia. 
The cotton states have good water power, and the cotton 
is so near to the mills that they can make cloth very 
cheaply. 

The factory we visit is at Spartanburg, South Carolina. 
It is in a brick building covering several acres of ground. 
The factory has three stories, made up of large rooms 
filled with interesting machinery, and there are hundreds 
of white men and women at work within it. The cotton 
is taken almost directly from the gin to the factory. We 
can imagine ourselves to be following a bale as it passes 
through one room after another, until what was at first 
only a great bag of white stuff is turned into cloth. . 

How is it done? 

It is not an easy thing to make this cloth which we buy 
for a few cents a yard. Take a piece of cotton batting, for 



Ii6 



THE SOUTH. 



this is much Hke the cotton as it lies in the bale, and pull 
it apart. What queer stuff it is ! It is made of thousands 
of little white hairs, so fine that several of them twisted 
together would not equal the thickness of one of the hairs 
of your head. These little cotton hairs are called fibers. 
They are not as long as your finger. There are millions 




Making Cotton Threads. 

of them in a few pounds of cotton, and in our big bale 
there are probably more of those little hairs than there are 
people in the United States. Still, of the little cotton 
hairs the strongest of cloth and thread are to be made. 

Now let us follow our bale as it goes through the mill. 
It is first taken apart, and the cotton is thrown upon great 
cylinders or rollers called openers. These pull the hairs 



COTTON FACTORIES. 



17 



apart and separate each of them as far as possible from the 
others. The cotton thus loosened is passed through other 
rollers the sharp teeth of which pick out the dirt, so that 
when the cotton comes from them not a stick, a leaf, or a 
grain of sand is left in it. It now feels very soft and is 
even whiter than it was in the bale. 




Mule Spinner. 



The next process is called carding. Here the cotton is 
run through rollers covered with little wire teeth so fine 
that there are more than a score of them on a space as 
large as your finger nail. These little teeth brush and 
comb the cotton much as you comb your hair. As the 
cotton passes through them they pull the tangled hairs 
apart and make them lie almost altogether one way, so 



Il8 THE SOUTH. 

that when they come out at the other end of the rollers 
they are in the shape of a rope of soft cotton yarn. It is 
of this rope that the threads are to be made. 

The rope is as big around as a broomstick. It looks 
big enough to make a dozen threads, but it is not nearly 
large enough to make one. It is as soft as down. It is 
doubled again and again as it goes through machines 
which twist it finer and finer, until at last it is not bigger 
around than a fishing line. It is still soft, however. An- 
other strand of the same size, which has been twisted from 
another cotton rope, is now joined with it, and the two are 
twisted and retwisted by machinery until they are as small 
as the finest cotton thread used for sewing. This is the 
thread for the cloth. 

As the thread comes from the machines some of it is 
rolled upon long spools, called spindles, by what is known 
as the mule spinner. The mule spinner takes the place of 
the old spinning wheel, save that it winds hundreds of 
spools at one time, one machine often doing as much work, 
perhaps, as a thousand women could do. Some threads 
are wound upon rollers or beams of the width of the cloth 
to be made. These threads are to be the long threads of 
the cloth. 

The short threads, or what is known as the filling, are 
first wound upon small bobbins, and then are thrown from 
one side of the cloth to the other by the shuttle, which 
carries the thread back and forth through the long threads 
at the rate of one hundred and fifty times or more a min- 
ute. This is called weaving, and the machines with which 
the weaving is done are the looms. The machinery in the 
weaving rooms makes a great din, and the looms work so 
fast that thousands of yards of cloth are woven in one fac- 
tory in a day. 



THE RICEFIELDS. 



119 



XIV. AMONG THE RICEFIELDS. 

WE see more and more cotton as we go farther south 
into Georgia. There are cornfields here and there. 
We visit great peach orchards, and ride through fields 
devoted to the raising of watermelons for the markets of 
the North. There are even more colored people here than 




Ox Carts. 



in Virginia, and we see scores of them at the stations, in the 
fields at work, or standing in the doors of their little cabins, 
watching the train as it goes whizzing by. 

How many mules there are! In some sections of the 
southern states there are more mules than horses. Now 
and then we see a negro driving an ox hitched with rope 
harness to a rude, old-fashioned cart. 

CARP. N. AM.— 8 



I20 



THE SOUTH. 



The towns we pass are not so large as those of New 
England, but new buildings are springing up about many 
of them, and near each of the cotton mills there is a little 
colony of new houses. 

At Atlanta we find one of the most beautiful and most 
thriving cities of our southern section. It is a great busi- 
ness and manufacturing center. It is situated so high 
above the sea that it has a delightful cli- 
mate in the summer, and it is so far south 
that its winters are not cold. We spend 
some time in the handsome state capitol, 
take a stroll under the old forest trees 
along Peachtree Street, upon which are 
some of the finest houses of the city ; and 
then we go out upon the electric cars to 
see the battlefields where some terrible 
fighting was done during the Civil War. 
^^^mI^^I Atlanta has railroads branching out in 

every direction, and we get cars here 
which carry us eastward to the Atlantic 
Ocean. We visit the islands off the coast 
where the famed sea-island cotton is 
raised ; and along the lowlands bordering 
the Atlantic we travel through a country 
spotted with fields of rice. The rice is 
now almost ready for cutting. It is of a bright yellow col- 
or, and at first sight it makes us think of wheat or oats. 
As we get nearer we see that the straw is different from 
wheat straw, and that the little grains upon it are not at 
all like any grains raised in the North. 

We can see water shining out in the fields at the roots 
of the plants, and we are told that the best rice is raised 
where the ground can be flooded with fresh water, and 





Rice. 



THE RICEFIELDS. 121 

that a great deal of moisture is needed to develop the crop. 
The plants must also have plenty of hot sun, and hence we 
find the best rice-raising lands of the United States in the 
lower parts of the warm South Atlantic coast and in the 
hot, moist country about the mouth of the Mississippi 
River. The states of South Carolina and Louisiana, in 
fact, produce the most of the rice raised in the United 
States, and the chief rice-shipping ports are Charleston, 
Savannah, and New Orleans. 

But let us visit one of the rice plantations near Charles- 
ton, South Carolina. We shall learn that raising rice is 
by no means an easy thing. The fields have little banks 
about their edges, so that the water, when let in upon 
them, will stay there, forming a pond covering the whole 
field. The plants are grown in the mud. The beds are 
flooded, and in a short time the sprouts poke their little 
green heads up through the water. After this the water 
is drawn off until the stalk forms a joint. The plants are 
then plowed and hoed. They are again flooded, and the 
water is allowed to remain about their roots until the straw 
turns yellow, when the rice is ripe and ready for cutting. 

Rice is harvested much as wheat and oats are harvested. 
The straw is cut and shocked up in the fields, and after a 
short time thrashed to get the grain out. When the 
thrashing is done the process of preparing the rice for the 
market has only begun. Each little grain of rice has a 
hull on it, which does not come off in the thrashing. This 
hull sticks as tight to the grain as though it were glued, 
and the rice, before it can be sold, has to be cleaned by 
running it through hulling machines. As it comes out of 
the machines it is rough, and other machines are used, in 
which each grain of rice is rubbed and polished until it is 
smooth and glossy. 



122 



THE SOUTH. 



Some rice is raised on the higher lands without water. 
This is known as upland rice. It is grown in almost the 
same way as wheat and oats are grown in the North. 

The greatest ricefields of the world are in Asia, where 
the rice is raised in flooded fields. In some parts of that 
continent so many people eat rice that it takes the place 




ARicefield. 



which bread has with us, and, indeed, it is said that one 
fourth of all of the people of the world live upon rice. 

Have you ever heard how rice first came to America? 
There were no rice plants here until about two hundred 
years after Columbus discovered this continent. Take 
your map of Africa, and find the island of Madagas- 
car, which lies off its east coast. It was from that island 



CHARLESTON. 



123 



that a ship started out in 1694, and after a long voyage 
came into the Atlantic Ocean, and was driven by a storm 
into the port of Charleston. The captain of the steamer 
had a sack of rough rice with him. Upon leaving he gave 
the rice to one of the citizens of Charleston, who planted 
some of it in a low place in his garden. A big crop was 
the result. This man gave the seeds to his friends, and 
within a short time rice became one of the chief products 
of this part of the United States. 




A Street in Charleston. 

We see bags of rice ready for shipment on the wharves 
of the Charleston harbor. There are steamers loading 
cotton for Europe, and other ships which are being filled 
with a sort of rock dug from the ground near here, which 
is of great value for fertilizing. 

Charleston is one of the most interesting cities of the 
South. It is built on a peninsula formed by the mouths 
of the Ashley and Cooper rivers. It is laid out in square 



124 THE SOUTH. 

blocks, the cross streets extending from river to river, and 
the other streets cutting them at right angles. Charleston 
is a very old city ; it was founded only sixty years after 
the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth ; and it has always been 
noted as an important commercial point. Many of its 
streets are wide, and some of them are lined with great 
houses, at the sides of which are broad lawns and gardens. 
Many of the old mansions have big pillars in front and at 
the sides, which support porches or galleries, forming cool 
places during the hot summ.ers. 

Back of some of these old houses we can see the quarters 
and cabins which were occupied by the negroes in slave 
times ; and we meet so many colored people on the streets 
that we are reminded that South Carolina has a large 
number of this race among its inhabitants. 

After a walk along East Bay Street, we take a stroll 
upon the Battery, facing the sea. We then get on the 
little steamer which goes several times a day to the most 
interesting points in the harbor. We visit Fort Sumter, 
where the first shot was fired at our flag at the beginning 
of the great Civil War. The fort is on a little island not 
very far f^'om the shore. The island is made of rocks. It 
is surrounded by brick walls about forty feet high and 
eight feet thick. Grass-covered earthworks are still to be 
seen on some parts of the wall. 




Fort Sumter, 



SAVANNAH. 



125 



XV. A VISIT TO A TURPENTINE FARM. 

LEAVING Charleston, a few hours' ride by rail to the 
^ southward brings us to the great seaport of Savannah, 
nearthe mouth ofthe Savannah River. Savannah is famous 
for its cotton presses and rice mills, and is especially noted 
as the chief port of the world in its shipment of turpentine 
and rosin. At certain seasons of the year the wharves of 
Savannah are covered with barrels of such stuff, awaiting 
the ships that are to take them to Europe. Large quan- 
tities are also being loaded upon cars and steamers to be 
sent to every part of the United States. 







'^:^ 







On the Wharves at Savannah. 



Turpentine and rosin are made from the sap or gum of 
the long-leafed pine tree. Turpentine is the liquid white 
spirit which is used in making varnish and other things. 
Rosin waxes the bows of violins ; it is also used in the 



126 THE SOUTH. 

manufacture of soap, and it is especially valuable for var- 
nish. The furniture which we use is probably varnished 
with the juice of the pine trees of the forests of Georgia or 
the Carolinas, and from the same source comes the tur- 
pentine used to mix the paint on our houses. 

The process of getting out turpentine and rosin is known 
as turpentine farming. A turpentine farm is perhaps the 
queerest kind of a farm in the world. It is a forest of 
pine trees, each of which has been so cut and scarred that 
the sap oozes out and may be collected for making tur- 
pentine. There are farms of this kind all along our South 
Atlantic coast from North Carolina to Florida, and farther 
inland along the Gulf of Mexico to Louisiana. These re- 
gions have forests so vast that you might travel for miles 
through them without seeing a human being. You would 
meet with few cultivated spots, and would see little else 
than trees, trees, trees, and now and then gangs of men 
getting out lumber or gathering turpentine. 

For many years the most of our turpentine came from 
the woods of North Carolina ; but turpentine farming soon 
kills the trees, and the pine trees there are now almost 
used up. The best turpentine farms are now farther south. 
There are hundreds about the cities of Savannah and 
Brunswick, and we shall see them in Alabama, Louisiana, 
and other parts of the South. 

Each farm consists of thousands of pine trees. The 
trees are not large around, but they are perfectly straight, 
and so tall that they sometimes reach to the height of an 
eight-story house before their branches begin. 

There is little underbrush in such forests, and we can 
easily walk through the woods. Every tree has one or 
two scarred places upon it where the bark and wood have 
been chopped off. These places begin at the foot of the 



^ 



TURPENTINE FARMING. 



127 



tree and extend upward as high as your waist. As we 
look we see that a hole or box has been cut in the tree at 
the foot of each scarred place, and that the white sap is 
oozing from the wood and running down into the box. 

The size of a turpentine farm is known by the number of 
boxes. Ten thousand five hundred boxes make what is 
called a crop. There are farms which have millions of boxes, 
and in which, during the fall and winter, hundreds of ne- 
groes are kept busy scar- 
ring the trees and cutting 
out the boxes. The men 
labor in gangs, under an 
overseer. Two men work 
together, taking a tree at 
a time. One man stands 
on each side of a tree, 
with an ax in his hand, 
and they chop in turns. 
For this reason, whenever 
it is possible, a right- 
handed man and a left- 
handed man work to- 
gether. 

The gathering of tur- 
pentine begins as soon as the sap moves in the spring. 
At this time it oozes out in thick white drops on the cut 
places and falls down into the boxes. It soon hardens, 
forming a gum about as thick as molasses. 

Every few days the boxes fill up, and the men come 
along and scoop out the liquid. Each man has a keg with 
him, and he empties the sap into it as he goes from tree to 
tree. When his keg is full he carries it to a barrel, in 
which it is taken to the turpentine distillery. 




Scarring the Trees. 



128 



THE SOUTH. 



The trees must be ciit again and again during the sum- 
mer to keep the wounds fresh. Such drops of the sap as 
harden are scraped down into the boxes. The next year 
a place is cut out on the tree a Httle higher up, to furnish 
turpentine gum for the next season, but that of the second 




A Turpentine Distillery. 



year is not so good as that of the first. The sap grows 
darker from year to year, and after five or six years the 
tree gives forth sap so dark that it is not valuable, and the 
tree is ready to die. 

But let us follow the barrel which we have seen filled 
with the juice of the pine tree, and see how it is turned 
into rosin and turpentine. As the sap oozes out it is of a 
waxy, gummy nature. The question is to get the turpen- 
tine out. It will take eight barrels of gum to make two 
barrels of turpentine, and what remains will be rosin. 

This is done at the turpentine distillery. We can tell 
we are nearing it long before we get there by the smell of 



THE PINE FORESTS. 1 29 

the rosin. It makes us think of a big canning factory, the 
smell is so like that of the wax used for sealing the tops 
of fruit cans. The odor grows stronger as we approach 
the big shed of the distillery, and we now perceive that 
the smell comes from the gum as it is being boiled to 
get out the turpentine. 

Let us see how this is done. The gum is first mixed 
with water, and then put into a great kettle set in a brick 
furnace in which hot fires are kept. As the gum melts, 
the turpentine in it rises up in a vapor and goes off into 
pipes kept cold by causing streams of spring water to flow 
over them. As the vapor enters the pipes it condenses, 
turns to a liquid again, and at the end flows out in a stream 
of clear white turpentine. It is now run into barrels, and 
shipped to the markets. The rosin which has been left in 
the kettle by the boiling has become thick. It is also put 
into barrels, where it soon hardens, and is then ready for 
sale. 

It is from the same kind of trees that produce the tur- 
pentine that some of the most valuable lumber of the 
United States comes. At every few miles along the rail- 
roads there are sawmills where such trees are being made 
into lumber, to be shipped to all parts of the United States. 
This lumber is sometimes known as the Georgia yellow 
pine. It is used largely for floors and the inside woodwork 
of houses, and there is scarcely a lumber yard in the north- 
ern part of our country where you will not find some of it. 
The forests of the South are of great value. Many rail- 
roads are now built to bring the lumber to market, and 
there are vast stretches of country in this part of the 
United States which are nothing but woods. There are 
many swamps which contain cypress trees, gum trees, and 
other good timber. Some swamps are so large that they 



130 



THE SOUTH. 



have never been explored, and the Okefinokee Swamp in 
Georgia has regions which are as dense as the jungles of 
tropical countries. These swamps have many quagmires 
in which a horse or a man might sink out of sight. They 
contain all sorts of snakes, and in some of the swamps 
of Georgia and Florida alligators by the hundreds crawl 
through the muddy waters. 







XVI. FLORIDA AND ITS ORANGE GROVES. 



NOW suppose we take a run down into Florida. This 
peninsula forms the southeastern end of our Atlantic 
coast. It is one of the tropical parts of the United States, 
and very different from the lands farther north. Much of 
the peninsula is low and sandy, and the Everglades, at its 
southern end, are largely made up of swamps. Some 
parts of Florida are so near the level of the sea that it 
looks as though the waters might rush in and drown the 
people. At the end of the peninsula the land drops out 
of sight, a little hill poking its head up here and there 
through the water, and forming the Florida Keys, which 



FLORIDA. 



13 



end in Key West. Key West is a liabitable little island 
having a well-fortified harbor. The people are chiefly 
engaged in making the Key West cigars. 

The railroad from Savannah brings us first to Jackson- 
ville, on the St. Johns River. Jacksonville is the largest 
city of Florida. It is the chief seaport of the state. The 




Live Oaks and Spanish Moss. 

ocean steamers sail to it up the St. Johns, which at this 
point is so wide that it looks like an arm of the ocean. 
We find many ships at the wharf, and there are side- 
wheel river steamers, upon which we shall travel far up the 
St. Johns into the heart of Florida. 

Leaving Jacksonville, we go for a long distance through 
what seems to be a great inland lake. We sail for miles 



132 



THE SOUTH. 



and miles before the river grows narrower, and we then 
pass through forests of palmetto trees, live oaks, and 
cypresses, the branches of which are loaded down with 
Spanish moss. This moss looks much like frosted silver. 
It is a sort of air plant which crawls all over the trees, 
hanging down from the limbs, and in some places almost 
reaching the water. Much of the earth along the banks 
is sandy. We miss everywhere the green turf which 
we have in other parts of our country ; and although our 
surroundings are beautiful, we long 
^ for the velvety grass of the North. 
We find, however, that every part 
of the world has its own beauties. 
The wild flowers of Florida comprise 
many that are grown in northern hot- 
houses. In some places we go 
through jungles so dense that we 
imagine ourselves in the hot lands of 
Africa. The very air feels dififerent. 
It is soft and balmy in the evenings 
and mornings, but at midday, even 
on the river, the sun is so hot that 
we have to keep under cover. 

We see curious birds on our voy- 
age. There are herons and buzzards ; long-legged cranes 
and big-throated pelicans stand in the mud on the edge 
of the river ; and now and then we see alligators scrambling 
down the muddy banks as they hear the noise of the boat. 
The streams which flow into the St. Johns furnish ex- 
cellent fishing. Florida is one of the best fishing grounds 
in the United States. It is the home of the tarpon, the 
biggest fish we have that can be caught with a hook. 
Many a tarpon, if it stood upon its tail, would be as tall 




A Pelican. 



ORANGE ORCHARDS. 



133 



as a man, and some have been caught which weighed more 
than one hundred and fifty pounds. Tarpon fishing re- 
quires a very strong hne. The sportsman has often to 
fight with the fish for hours, letting it run this way and 
that with the hool< until it is tired out and can at last be 
dragged to the boat. 

We go quite a long distance up the St. Johns before we 
reach the best orange-growing districts of Florida. There 




ill 

An Orange Orchard. 



are oranges in all parts of the state, but those of the north 
are likely to be spoiled by the frost. There are some ex- 
cellent groves on what is known as the Indian River. 

We have no trouble in getting a permit to visit the 
orchards. Oranges are as common in Florida as apples 
are in New York or New England, and we are asked to 
go in among the trees and pick all we can eat. 



134 



THE SOUTH. 



How delicious the oranges taste when they come from 
the trees! They are more juicy than any we can buy in 
the stores. How full the trees are! Some of them are 
so loaded with fruit that the golden balls shine out every- 
where through the emerald-green leaves. It is said that 
there are some trees in Florida which bear as many as five 
thousand oranges in a single year. 



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A Pineapple Field. 



We ask how orange trees are raised. The owner of one 
of the groves tells us that it takes from five to ten years 
after planting for an orange tree to come into bearing. He 
says there are trees which have been known to produce 
fruit when they were more than one hundred years old. 

The orange crop is a very important one. It is esti- 
mated that more than six hundred million oranges are 



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w^^ 

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-^€»- ?-i-*'";i''-H* .'.4 



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TO THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 1 35 

eaten in the United States every year. Some of these are 
imported from Sicily, an island in the Mediterranean Sea; 
but our best oranges come from Florida, and from south- 
ern California, on the other side of our country. 

In southern Florida there are fields of pineapples and 
cocoanut groves. The cocoanut trees are a species of the 
palm. They begin to bear at from nine to twelve years 
of age, and a good tree will have at one time as many as 
one hundred and fifty cocoanuts on it. The pineapples 
grow on the ground, not unlike cabbages. They are cul- 
tivated, and, like the oranges, are much more delicious 
when eaten fresh. 

The most of southern Florida, however, is very wild. 
You can ride for hundreds of miles in boats through the 
swamps, and you will find there bears, wildcats, and deer. 
If you take a swim in the water you must look out for 
alligators, and one is hardly safe in some parts of the 
Everglades without a gun in his hand. 



y>!<c 



XVII. THROUGH THE MISSISSIPPI JETTIES 
TO NEW ORLEANS. 

IT is at Tampa, on the west coast of Florida, that we 
get a ship which will take us across the Gulf of Mex- 
ico to the mouth of the Mississippi River. The Gulf of 
Mexico does not look very large on the map, but its east- 
ern and western shores are farther apart in places than 
New York and Chicago. Our best route by water will be 
to go first to Mobile, the chief seaport of Alabama, and 
thence by a short ride to the mouth of the Mississippi and 
up to New Orleans. 

CARP. N. AM.— Q 



136 THE SOUTH. 

We enter the Mississippi River through that one of its 
mouths known as the South Pass. The Mississippi has a 
number of mouths through which it flows into the Gulf of 
Mexico. The lands in this part of our country have been 
built up during the ages by the mud or silt carried down 
by the Mississippi from the uplands. The waters of the 
Mississippi are loaded with mud. They color the clear 
waters of the Gulf of Mexico far out from the mouth of 
the river. They bring enough dirt into the gulf every 
year, it is said, to make an island a mile square and half 
as high as the Washington Monument. 

You would think so much mud would stop up the river. 
So it would were the current not strong enough to carry 
it out into the gulf. As it is, so much mud has been 
dropped into the bottom of the gulf, not far from the 
mouth of the river, that great bars have been built up, over 
which large ships cannot easily pass. 

Our ship, however, crosses one of these bars by sailing 
through a channel formed by what are known as the Mis- 
sissippi River jetties. These jetties are river walls, which 
have been made in a curious way. They were planned 
and constructed by Captain James B. Eads, in order that 
ships might go from the gulf through the bars into the 
deep waters of the river, and thus reach New Orleans and 
the other cities upon its banks. Captain Eads saw that 
the gulf was much deeper a little farther out from the 
bars, and he believed that if he could make walls, or jetties, 
on both sides of the channel, so that the water would have 
to pass between them without spreading out, it would flov/ 
so much faster that it would carry the mud with it far out 
into the gulf. He thought that the stream would at the 
same time wash out the mud in the channel where it 
crossed the bars. He laid his plan before Congress, and 



THE MISSISSIPPI JETTIES. 1 37 

was given the money to carry it out. It was found to be 
a success. The river flows through with great force, and 
now there is a channel, several hundred feet wide and 
thirty feet deep, through which ships can go from the 
Gulf of Mexico into the river. 

But how were the jetties made? 

It must be very difficult to build walls in the sea. First 
many rows of great tree trunks, or piles, were driven into 
the bed of the gulf on both sides of the channel, so that 
there were wide lines of piles running out from the end of 
the land through the water, over the bars, and on into the 
gulf. Some of the piles were driven thirty feet down into 
the bottom of the gulf in order that they might be very 
strong. 

But the trees alone would not have kept back the water. 
No ; it would be as easy to stop a brook by holding your 
hand down into it and spreading out your fingers as to 
keep back the Mississippi by tree trunks. Very solid and 
closely built walls were needed. These could not be made 
with mortar or stone, for there was no way to keep back 
the water while the masons were working. 

How do you think they did it? 

They made the river help build its own wall. First they 
cut millions of willow twigs and limbs, and tied them to- 
gether into great rafts. They floated these rafts in among 
the piles, and then loaded them with heavy stones and 
gravel until they sank down to the bottom. Then they 
floated other rafts just over these, and sank them in the 
same way, until at last there were walls of willow and 
stone on each side of the channel, from the land's end far 
out into the Gulf of Mexico. 

The walls were not yet tight ; but they were soon 
made tight by the water. The water from the Mississippi 



138 



THE SOUTH. 



River, as it flowed through the willow and rocks, left enough 
mud to fill the spaces between them, and now there is a 
wall several miles long on each side of the channel. The 
water rushes through the channel with such force that it 
carries its mud far out into the deep waters of the gulf, 
so that it does not affect travel where it falls to the bottom. 




Canal Street, New Orleans 



New Orleans is mostly on the left bank of the river, 
about a hundred miles from the gulf. We pass many ships 
as we sail from the gulf, and the vessels increase in num- 
ber as we near New Orleans. This city is the chief sea- 
port of the great Mississippi Valley. As we approach it 
we pass ships piled high with cotton bales, steamers loaded 
with barrels of sugar, and ships full of grain to be carried 
to Europe. New Orleans is fast becoming one of our 



NEW ORLEANS. 



139 



great grain ports, and vast quantities of grain are shipped 
from here every year to the markets of Europe. 

From our ship we can see for miles over the country. 
In some places the land is lower than the surface of the 
river, and levees, or high banks, have been built up to 
keep back the waters. This is the case with parts of New 




A Cemetery, New Orleans. 



Orleans. There is, indeed, no place in the city where you 
can dig for more than a few feet without striking water, 
and for this reason New Orleans cannot have cisterns or 
cellars. In many of the cemeteries the graves are above 
ground, and we visit some where the coffins are laid away 
in vaults, resting one on top of the other, as though in a 
great file of pigeonholes. 



40 



THE SOUTH. 



We find New Orleans very interesting. It is more like 
a European city than any other city of the United States. 
New Orleans first belonged to the French. A little later 
Spain owned a large part of our country northwest of the 
Gulf of Mexico, and New Orleans was then one of the 
chief Spanish towns in the New World. Then this terri- 
tory again came into the possession of France, and in 

1 803 it was sold by the 
French to the United 
States. You may have 
read of the sale in your 
history as the " Louisi- 
ana purchase." By 
this purchase we got 
some of the most valu- 
able of our lands, in- 
cluding the town of 
New Orleans. 

This town has now 
grown to be a large 
city. It has three hun- 
dred thousand people, 
but it still shows the 
marks of the foreigners 
who founded it. It has 
long streets of old houses with tiled roofs, something like the 
buildings you see in pictures of the cities of Italy or south- 
ern France. There are wide porches, or galleries, built 
out over the streets from the second stories of the houses, 
so that you can walk for blocks without getting in the rain 
or sun, except at the crossings of the streets. The finest 
business parts of the city along Canal Street make one 
think of the Boulevards of Paris. 




A Street Scene. 



NEW ORLEANS. 14I 

In some parts of New Orleans there is as much Spanish 
or French spoken as EngHsh. Suppose we visit the 
French market. This is one of the largest in the city. It 
is not far from Canal Street, and we can easily walk to it 
from our hotel. We find that many of the marketmen are 
French, Spanish, and Italian, and those who are buying 
use what to us seems a strange jargon in making their 
bargains. There are some Americans, but the faces of the 
most of them show that they are of foreign descent. At 
some of the stalls vegetables are sold by the lot, and not 
by the bushel, peck, or quart. They are arranged in piles 
on tables, and each marketman fixes the sizes and prices 
of his own piles. The buyers look at the piles and take 
those which they think are the biggest and best. 

But let us walk down to the wharves, and see how the 
cotton is handled. This is the greatest cotton-shipping 
port of the world, and millions of dollars' worth of cotton 
is sent from here to Europe every year. The cotton is 
brought in by boat and by rail from the plantations of the 
Mississippi and Gulf states. It is first hauled to cotton 
compresses and squeezed into smaller bundles, so that it 
may not require so much room on the steamers which take 
it to New England or to Europe. 

As we get nearer the wharves we see large drays loaded 
with cotton. They are pulled by mules driven by negroes, 
who sit high up in the air on top of the bales. Let us 
follow one of them, and see how the pressing is done. 

The wagon goes through the narrow streets not far from 
the banks of the river. Here there are many low build- 
ings surrounding large yards, which can only be entered 
through iron doors. These are known as cotton yards. 
We enter, and see that the buildings are immense sheds 
filled with cotton bales. The yards are also filled with 



142 



THE SOUTH. 



cotton, and the pav^ements outside are so piled up with 
cotton bales that we find it hard to get through. 

As we look, a dray loaded with cotton comes in through 
the doors. The bales are rolled off and weighed. Then 
they are wheeled on low trucks to another part of the yard, 
where the great pressing machines are at work. 

As the bales are brought in, each takes up about as 
much space as the ordinary kitchen table. It is as high 
as your shoulder and about four feet square. It has al- 




O.a the Wharves at New Orleans. 



ready been squeezed by the machinery of the plantations 
into as small a package as was possible outside the great 
cotton press. 

Let us go over there, and see how the pressing is done. 
The man who wheels the bale to the press has already 
cut the iron hoops with which it is bound, and as he does 



A SUGAR PLANTATION. 1 43 

SO the cotton swells out as though to take a breath of 
relief. It swells more and more as it is thrown into the 
press, not seeming to realize that the great jaws of iron 
above and below it will crush it harder than ever. 

Near the press there is a steam engine, and, as we look, 
the engineer pulls a lever, and the two heavy steel jaws 
move toward each other. The bale of cotton seems to 
groan as the jaws squeeze it tighter and tighter until at 
last it is not as high as your knee. It has been pressed 
from a thickness of four feet down to about one foot ; and 
as it lies there thus squeezed, the iron hoops are again 
bound about it. It swells out a little, trying in vain to 
burst its iron bands as the monster machine lets go. Then 
it is pulled out and rolled upon another dray, which is 
waiting to carry it off to its dark prison in the hold of the 
steamer. Such pressing costs but a small sum per bale, 
and it more than pays for itself in the increased number of 
bales that a ship can carry. 



3>^C 



XVIII. A VISIT TO A SUGAR PLANTATION. 

HAVE you a sweet tooth? 
If so, you must be careful in your travels with us 
to-day. New Orleans is one of the chief sugar markets of 
the United States. There are thousands of barrels of 
sugar piled up on the wharves, and there are streets of the 
city in which so much sugar is kept or refined that we 
smell nothing but sugar and molasses as we w^alk through 
them. 

We are now in the land of sugar. There are vast 
plantations in this part of the country where sugar cane is 



144 



THE SOUTH. 



cultivated, and we can here learn how some of our sugar 
is made. We saw how maple sugar is produced in Ver- 
mont by boiling down the sap of the maple tree. A great 
deal of sugar is now made from beets in the western part 







i<^.^^'-:j^4v^k!^ 



Sugar Plantation. 



of our country, and another large portion comes from these 
cane plantations on the rich, moist soil of the lands about 
the Gulf of Mexico. We do not, however, produce nearly 
all the sugar we use. We get much beet sugar from Ger- 
many, and cane sugar by the shipload is brought to us 
from the West Indies, the Hawaiian Islands, and Brazil. 

There are scores of sugar plantations within a few hours' 
ride of New Orleans, some of which contain thousands of 
acres. The plantation we shall visit to-day is so large that 
a railroad has been built upon it in order that the sugar 
cane may be quickly brought from the fields to the factory. 
There are so many people employed upon the plantation 



A SUGAR PLANTATION. 



145 



that their houses would make quite a large village, and the 
buildings of its refinery cover several acres. 

We must take a railroad train to visit this plantation. 
The cars from New Orleans carry us for miles through 
fields of sugar cane. Now and then we see the smoke of 
a huge sugar factory streaming out against the blue sky. 
We pass through swamps, the trees of which are loaded 
down with Spanish moss, and at last stop at the station 
which was especially made to accommodate the workmen 
of this sugar estate. 

We first take horses for a gallop 
across the plantation. There are 
roads through the fields, and we 
ride for miles between walls of • ' 

green cane. The leaves of the 
cane rise above our heads as we 
sit on our horses. • 

Have you ever seen a field of 
corn when it is ready for cutting ? 

Such a field looks much like a 
section of a sugar plantation when 
the cane is ripe. The sugar cane, 
however, is much higher than the 
corn, and its stalk has several 
broad leaves where the corn's stalk 

has one. Many of the sugar-cane stalks are fifteen feet 
high, and they are planted so close together that it would 
be almost impossible for a man to make his way through 
them. 

But before we go on, let us stop and learn how sugar 
cane is grown. The planting is done either in the fall or 
in the spring, but the process is not like corn-planting. 
The cane used for sugar does not grow from the seed. 




'■*■* ~'"^^<v^ 



Cutting the Cane. 



146 THE SOUTH. 

The cane stalks when ripe are cut off, and laid flat in fur- 
rows which run from one side of the field to the other. The 
furrows are seven feet apart. The stalks of cane are laid 
down so that they fit close together, three being placed 
side by side, making three long rows or pipes of cane in 
each furrow. Next the soil is thrown over the cane with 
a plow. In the spring sprouts start up from each joint 
of the cane, making long ribbons of green, as it were, 
against the black field. These sprouts grow very rapidly. 
In August they have become as tall as a man, and they 
grow on until the middle of October, when they are about 
twice as high as the average corn stalk and are ready for 
cutting. This is the size of the cane on the plantation 
during our visit. 

We stop for a while at one end of the great sugar farm, 
where scores of men and women are cutting cane. They 
labor in squads, under an overseer. As the cutters stand 
in the fields they face what looks like a solid wall of green 
cane. Each cutter has a knife, which flashes in the sun- 
light as he cuts his way through the wall. 

See how carefully and how quickly they work! They 
seem to know just how many strokes to use, so that not a 
motion is wasted. The richest of the juice is found near 
the bottom of the stalk, and for that reason they cut the 
stalks off very close to the ground. The tops and leaves 
are worth little for sugar, and so they strip each stalk of 
its leaves and cut off its top before they go on to the next. 
The stalks, when cut, are thrown into piles or windrows to 
be ready for the carts which gather them up for the cars. 

There is a train now ready to move. Let us jump on 
and go with it, and see something of the work which it 
takes to produce a spoonful of sugar. 

As we ride to the factory we pass large canals, and are 



A SUGAR PLANTATION. 



47 



told that this plantation was at one time a swamp, and that 
the sugar lands usually have to be drained before the cane 
can be planted. We have seen the work that it takes to 
grow the cane, and we are now approaching a group of large 
buildings which are filled with wonderful machinery for 
getting the juice out of the stalks and turning it into sugar. 







Interior of Sugar Mill. 

Our car stops at the buildings. The cane is thrown off 
upon a moving belt or roadway, which carries it up to the 
top of the big sugar mill, and drops it down upon two 
heavy iron rollers, which have teeth much like those of an 
enormous file. The rollers themselves are as big around 
as a hogshead and are very much longer. They are of 
steel, and are so arranged that a great weight can be 
added to them by machinery. As each stalk falls between 



148 THE SOUTIT. 

the rollers, the teeth catch hold of it and pull it in. The 
enormous weight squeezes the juice out of it, and it passes 
ofT on a moving belt at the end of the machine, crushed to 
a pith, and as dry as a last year's corn stalk. It is so dry 
that it burns easily, and the moving belt throws it into the 
top of the furnace, where it forms the fuel to make the 
steam which is to squeeze the juice out of the stalks yet to 
come. 

But what becomes of the juice ? Come down under the 
rollers and see. It is pouring down in streams from the 
lower part of the rollers into a trough about a foot wide. 
Dip in your finger and taste the liquid as it falls from the 
cane. It is so sweet that it is almost sickening. The fluid 
looks dirty, and it reminds you of dishwater. Still, out of 
that sweet, dirty water the pure white sugar must come. 
Every bit of dirt must, however, be first taken out of it, 
for it must be as clear as crystal before it can be boiled 
down into sugar. 

The water is first bleached by putting it into large iron 
tanks and running sulphur gas through it. The gas makes 
the juice bubble, and the yellow foam which rises to the 
top is skimmed ofT. Lime is now put into the tank to 
settle the dirt, and after several such processes the water 
becomes almost perfectly clear. 

It is now ready for boiling. This is done in huge cop- 
per kettles or vats, which are heated by coils of steam pipe. 
As the liquid boils, it is skimmed. It flows from one tank 
to another, growing clearer and clearer, and thicker and 
thicker. Taste it now. It is the purest of sirup, and its 
color has turned a light yellow. 

Look at the sirup as it seethes in the tank ! What an 
enormous amount there is of it! Let us follow it along 
the pipes through which it is emptied into the immense 



A SUGAR PLANTATION. 



49 



vats on the floor overhead. There is enough sirup here to 
give a whole state a taffy-pulHng. There at the left is 
one big barrel which contains forty thousand pounds of 
sirup, which is boiling and seething in the process of being 
turned into sugar. 

Come with me now to that great vat, and see the half- 
sugared molasses which fills it. This vat is twice as long 
as your parlor at home, and so deep that if you fell into it 




Where the Sugar Cane Grows. 



you would be drowned in the sweet mixture. Take up a 
spoonful of the stuff. It is as thick as mush, and it is in 
fact a mush of sugar and molasses. 

It needs now only the drying machine to take out the 
sugar; this separates the molasses from the sugar; and 
we step into a room at the side, where the sugar goes after 
it leaves the machine. 

It comes into the room from the top, falling in an end- 



150 THE SOUTH. 

less stream of white sugar down from the ceiHng. There 
are men who are shoveHng it away as it falls. They are 
putting it into the barrels in which it is to be shipped to 
the markets. 

The coarser sugars are not so carefully cleaned, but much 
of the fine sugar we have on our tables is made in this way. 

What becomes of the molasses? Molasses, as the word 
is used in a sugar refinery, is the refuse which is left in the 
making of sugar. It contains the poorest parts of the juice 
after all the sugar possible has been made from it. Such 
molasses is different from what the sugar makers call sirup, 
which is made from the fine juice of the cane. The refuse 
molasses is indeed very cheap ; it is sometimes sold as low 
as one cent a gallon. When it is as cheap as this it does 
not pay to put it in barrels, for the barrels would be worth 
more than the molasses ; and so it is carried to the markets 
in tank cars, and is sold largely in bulk. 



o^^c 



XIX. UP THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER TO ST. 
LOUIS. 

WE leave New Orleans on a steamer this morning for 
a tour through the Mississippi Valley. This valley 
contains more than one third of all the land of the United 
States. It has more rich soil in one body than can be 
found in any other part of the world. Almost all of the 
basin of the Mississippi is good land. It Hes in the tem- 
perate zone, and is said to be one of the best dwelling 
places on the globe for civilized man. 

The Mississippi, including the Missouri, is the longest 
river in the world, and, with its branches, it forms one of 



UP THE MISSISSIPPI. 



51 



the most wonderful river systems of the globe. You might 
cross the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Liverpool 
three times, and not sail as far as you can sail upon the 
Mississippi system. 

As you see this system on the map, it seems like a huge 
tree, with its roots in the Gulf of Mexico, and its mighty 
branches spreading out over the richest lands of the United 




A Mississippi Steamboat. 



States. It is the great water highway of the central part 
of our country, and an almost endless procession of boats 
and ships is always moving up and down its trunk and 
through its various branches. We pass scores of ships as 
we leave New Orleans. 

Our steamer makes us think of a floating house of three 
stories. The lower stories are filled with freight ; the top 

CARP. N. AM. — 10 



152 



THE MISSISSirPI. 



story is our sleeping and eating place ; and the hurricane 
deck is the yard upon which we walk and watch the banks 
on both sides. We are moved through the muddy waters 




A Cypress Swamp. 

by the great paddle wheels at the sides of the boat, which 
its immense steam engines keep going day and night. 

How green and beautiful everything is! 

We sail at times through forests of cypress trees, loaded 
down with Spanish moss. The trees are so bound together 
with grapevines and dense vegetation that they form green 
walls on each side of the wide, muddy river; and the only 
living things we see are the birds which hop from branch 
to branch, and now and then a few people at the clearings, 
where little farms have been cut out of the trees. 



RIVER SCENERY. I 53 

Now the Mississippi widens, and we seem to be traveling 
through a series of lakes. We pass swamps and float by 
fields of sugar cane and cotton. 

Now and then we stop at a little village on the banks ; 
and farther up the river, at the city of Natchez, we take 
on packages of goods, bales of cotton, and hogsheads of 
tobacco. Rough-looking men and boys, the most of whom 
are colored, load and unload the steamers. They sing as 
they work, making a great noise as they roll the huge 
bales down the gang plank. 

At Vicksburg we stop for more cargo. Here there are 
immense elevators on the banks of the river, and bales of 
cotton, barrels of flour, and bags of grain are rolled down 
into the boat. All kinds of things are brought to the 
steamer. We see hundreds of crates of chickens taken 
on board to be carried to market. Each crate is just 
high enough for the chickens to stand up inside it. They 
poke their heads out of the slats on the top, and squawk 
complainingly at us, as the men carry them upon the 
boat. 

All the way to Memphis we pass steamers going down 
to New Orleans, loaded with cotton. Memphis is one of 
the most important cities below the mouth of the Ohio. 
There are so many boats at its wharves that they make us 
think of a seaport. There are steamers ready to sail up the 
Arkansas and White rivers, and in the busy season you can 
go by steamer every day from Memphis to St. Louis. 

How the Mississippi winds in and out as it flows on its 
course ! From Cairo to New Orleans it is like an enormous 
snake, only more crooked than any snake could possibly 
be. Mark Twain, who was once a Mississippi pilot, said that 
if you should peel an apple so that the whole skin would be 
in one single peeling, and should throw it over your shoul- 



154 



THE MISSISSIPPI. 



der, the way it would look as it fell on the floor would be 
much like the lower part of the Mississippi River. As our 
steamer winds through the curves, we see other boats sail- 
ing to the right and left along the winding current above 
and below us ; and there are places where we can get off 
upon the land, and walk across the fields a half-mile or so, 
and there wait for the steamer, which may have to go a 
dozen miles around to reach the same point. 

All along the river, for hundreds of miles after we leave 
New Orleans, we notice that banks, or levees, have been 
built up on each side of the stream to keep the water from 
running over the land. There are eighteen hundred miles 




A Levee. 



of such levees, on one side of the river or the other. It 
has cost many millions of dollars to build them, and every 
year Congress sets aside a large sum to improve the navi- 
gation of the Mississippi. 



THE LEVEES. 



155 



And are the levees strong enough to protect the people 
from floods? 

Yes ; sometimes, but not always. The Mississippi River 
is very hard to control. It is always changing its course, 




Flood Caused by a Break in a Levee. 



always wearing off the land in some places and piling it up 
in others. It seems to be always looking for a place where 
it can break through its banks. The least crack is soon 
enlarged by the water flowing through it, and if it is not 
stopped at once the river will pour out over the land. 

The moment a break is discovered the people rush to 
fill it. They drive down stakes into the water where the 
crack is, and put bags of earth between them. They take 
boats, and throw all kinds of stuff into the break, in order 
to stop the stream before it can make the hole larger. If 
the break should become ten feet wide it is almost useless 



156 THE MISSISSIPPI. 

to try to keep back the waters. They dissolve the bank 
as though it were sugar ; they cut off the dirt Hke a knife ; 
and when the break has reached a width of a hundred 
feet the banks drop down into the water in sUces half 
an acre in thickness, and the muddy river rushes with a 
loud noise over the country. 

At such times farms are often swallowed up ; islands are 
made in the stream, and thousands of acres of land are 
covered with water. The animals, when they see the water 
coming, run to the highest places ; but there are not many 
hills in the lower Mississippi region, and the cattle, horses, 
and sheep often starve before the water subsides or the 
people can come in boats to take them away. The Mis- 
sissippi floods often tear down houses, and you may some- 
times see buildings, with families on the roofs, floating 
down the riven The woodpiles on the banks are carried 
away, and thousands of cords of wood float upon the waters, 
while large trees that have been torn up by the roots are 
rapidly borne along by the current. 

On our voyage up the river we are stopped again and 
again by the ships and barges coming down. The traffic 
is enormous. We pass long rafts of lumber from the Red 
River. There are logs from the upper Mississippi, and 
rafts of boards, with little houses built upon them, in which 
the lumbermen live during the voyage. 

There are huge barges, or flatboats, loaded with grain, 
fastened together in blocks, and pushed by steamboats be- 
hind them. There are steamships pushing barges filled 
with corn, and we learn that millions of bushels of corn 
and wheat are thus taken down to New Orleans every year. 

Freight can be carried much more cheaply upon water 
than upon land. The rates are so low from St. Louis to 
New Orleans that as much grain as two horses could haul 



RIVER TRAFFIC. 157 

is carried at the rate of a cent for every five miles, and it 
costs less than six cents to take a bushel of wheat from St. 
Louis to New Orleans, although the distance between the 
two cities is more than twelve hundred miles. Coal is 
carried upon the rivers even more cheaply. It costs so 
little to carry it that people in New Orleans use coal from 
the mines of Pennsylvania, although the mines there are 
as far away as Maine is distant from Ireland. 

But why does it cost so little to carry heavy things on 
the water? 

We can easily see as we look at the big loads going by 
us, pushed by small steamers. A little steamboat on the 
Mississippi can do more work than one several times as 
large on the Atlantic Ocean. This is because the storms 
do not affect the river as they do the ocean. There are 
no heavy seas to sail through. The water is so quiet that 
large water-tight boxes or barges can be used to carry 
goods; and as there are no waves to contend with, one 
little steamer can push many of these barges down the river. 

There comes a steamer now, with a lot of barges filled 
with coal in front of it. Notice how it puffs as it forces 
them onward. The barges are fastened together, two 
moving along side by side. Each barge is as long as a 
city lot and almost as wide. It is as deep as the ceiling 
of a room is high from the floor, and if you will imagine 
an ordinary-sized schoolroom packed full of coal, you will 
have some idea of the amount of coal it is carrying down 
to New Orleans. 

We are almost stopped by these barges as we approach 
the city of Cairo. They have come through the Ohio 
River from the coal fields of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, 
and Ohio, the most of them having been loaded at Pitts- 
burg. The Ohio River may indeed be called the coal 



15' 



THE MISSISSIPPI. 



chute for the cities of the Mississippi Valley. A line of 
barges floats down it, carrying millions of tons of coal to 
the cities along its banks, furnishing the fuel which makes 
the steam for the factories of Cincinnati, Louisville, and 
St. Louis. 

Leaving Cairo, we find the river much straighter than it 
w^as farther south. We sail through a rich farming coun- 
try, and soon ap- 
proach the city of 
St. Louis, Mis- 
souri. St. Louis 
is the most im- 
portant of the 
Mississippi River 
cities. It is one 
of our chief com- 
mercial and man- 
ufacturing cen- 
ters, being the 
fourth in size 
among the cities 
of the United 
States. 

It is its situa- 
tion that makes 
St. Louis such aji 
important place. It is on the Mississippi, about halfway 
between the mouths of the Missouri and the Ohio, and only 
a few miles from the mouth of the Illinois River, so that 
goods can be easily shipped up and down the Mississippi 
and through all the branches of its system. This makes it 
the gateway to the southwestern part of our country, and 
many of the goods that are shipped to Mexico go through 




Union Depot, St. Louis. 



THE CORN BELT. 



59 



St. Louis. It Is a great railroad center, and a vast num- 
ber of trains are always speeding to and from it, carrying 
all kinds of freight. During our stay we look at the huge 
bridge across the Mississippi, and then visit the Union 
Depot, which is one of the largest and finest depots in the 
world. The cars all back into it, so that the engines are 
left outside, keeping the smoke out of the depot. 

We find St. Louis a beautiful city. It has wide, well- 
paved streets and many magnificent buildings. It has 
more parks than any other city in our country, and we 
enjoy our rides through the residence portion, the houses 
of which have beautiful yards. 



3>*^C 



XX. INDIAN CORN AND THE CORN BELT. 



AS we sail on our way up the Mississippi north from 
. St. Louis, we pass through vast tracts of corn. For 
hundreds of miles 
the banks on both 
sides of us are lined 
with cornfields, and 
we might travel on 
the railroad for 
hours on fast ex- 
press trains, east 
and west, without 
coming to the end 
of the fields. We 
are now in the heart of the great corn patch of the United 
States, and we decide to stop off and spend some time sur- 
rounded by this wonderful crop. 




The Corn Region. 



i6o 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



In our railroad rides we find that the corn grows so well 
here that in some places it reaches above the car windows, 
and we are whirled along between walls of green stalks, the 
wide leaves of which rustle in the wind made by the train 
as it carries you through them. Now the railroad track 
runs along upon an embankment. We are above the fields, 
and we look over a sea of green leaves, spotted with the 

golden tassels which 
form the ends of the 
stalks. Some of the 
^. _. leaves have turned to 

gold, the green stalks 
are streaked wuth yel- 
low, and the fat ears have 
husks of a lemon hue. 

The corn crop is now 
ready for harvest. The 
stalks are being cut and 
shocked, and later on the 
ears will be torn from 
their husks and carried 
to the markets. 

Pull off one of those 

ears of corn and look at 

it. You have before you 

one of the most wonderful of grains. It is a grain which 

more than any other belongs to our continent, for it was 

not known in Europe before America was discovered. 

Take one of the kernels and bite it open. How hard it 
is, and how white its inside looks ! If you should put it 
under the microscope, you would find that its flesh is com- 
posed of hundreds of little boxes, containing scores of 
cells, so that there are thousands of cells in a single grain. 




Huskingf Corn. 



THE CORN CROP. l6l 

Each of the cells contains starch and other matter good to 
eat, and corn is one of the best of foods for both man and 
beast. 

Do you realize how much our corn crop is worth to us? 
It is by far the most valuable thing we raise. We get 
more from our cornfields every year than we do from all 
our gold, silver, and lead mines. Our corn crop is worth 
more than twice as much as our wheat crop. We produce 
so much of it that it is almost impossible to realize how 
great the amount is. We raise more than two billion 
bushels of shelled corn every year. The figures are too 
big for us to understand them, and we shall consider first 
only the corn grown in the region where we are traveling. 
Corn is raised in nearly every part of the United States, 
but more than half of our crop comes from the seven great 
states of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, to the right of us, and 
Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska, on our left, as we 
go up the river. This is the greatest corn patch on the 
globe. It produces more than one billion bushels of corn 
every year, or more than one half of our crop. 

Now let us think for a moment how much corn one bil- 
lion bushels is. Suppose we load it upon wagons. Forty 
bushels of shelled corn forms a good load for two horses. 
Let each wagon hold that amount, and let the teams start at 
the Mississippi River and go eastward. We shall drive the 
teams so that the nose of each horse will just reach the 
tailboard of the wagon in front of it, making a con- 
tinuous train of wagons, each loaded with forty bushels of 
corn. Now where would the first wagon be when the last 
bushel was loaded? At Pittsburg, on the edge of the 
Alleghany Mountains? 

No ; it would be much farther eastward. 
At the Atlantic Ocean ? 



62 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



No ; still farther eastward. Suppose that the wagons 
could be driven across the oceans, and guess again. 

It might perhaps reach almost to Paris, do I hear some 
one say? 




"We should have to make six such lines around the world. 



Yes; it would reach, on and on, much farther than that. 
The line of wagons would extend from the Mississippi over 
our own country to the Atlantic Ocean, across the At- 
lantic to Europe, across Europe and over the highlands of 
Asia, and then across the wide Pacific Ocean. It would 
not stop there, but would climb over the plateaus and 



THE CORN CROP. 163 

peaks of the Rocky Mountains, and come back to you at 
the Mississippi River, making a soHd belt of corn wagons 
clear round the world. 

But stop! we have not yet loaded all of the corn crop 
of these seven states. The pile seems almost as big as 
when we began. There are five times as much corn left as 
that we have put on the wagons, and we should have to 
make six such lines around the world before we could load 
a single year's crop of this great corn patch. It would 
take so many wagons, indeed, that if they were stretched 
out in one single file, the first wagon would be more than 
one hundred and fifty thousand miles away before the last 
wagon was loaded. And yet these seven states contain 
only about one half of the corn we produce, and you must 
multiply the number of wagons by two if you wish to know 
how many would be needed to carry one year's corn crop 
of the whole United States. 

But what becomes of all this corn ? 

The most of it is used in this country. Not one bushel 
in twenty is shipped off to Europe. We can find where 
much of it goes by visiting the barnyards of the United 
States. We see the farmers throwing it out to the stock. 
We have so many cattle and hogs in our country that if 
we could drive them in single file they would form two 
lines long enough to guard our wagon train of corn as it is 
stretched round the globe. In such a march the noisiest 
animals would be the hogs. There would be more than 
forty millions of them, grunting and squealing as they fol- 
lowed the wagons. Corn is the chief food of hogs. By 
feeding it to them the farmer turns his corn into pork, thus 
making the hogs manufacture the corn into an article that 
can be easily sold. 

The people of Europe will not buy much corn, but they 



64 



THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



are glad to get our meat ; and so, through this corn belt 
where we are traveling, we shall find vast establishments 
devoted to the killing of hogs and preparing their meat for 
sale. These are known as packing houses. We may visit 
them at Omaha, Kansas City, and St. Louis. Here hun- 
dreds of thousands of hogs are killed every year, and from 
here their meat is shipped to all parts of the world. 



D>S^C 



XXI. A VISIT TO A GREAT WHEAT FARM. 



NORTH and west of the upper Mississippi is a region 
which might be called the *' Bread Basket of North 
America." Here, in both Canada and the United States, 
are some of the best wheat lands of the world. 

Wheat is one of the most important grains known to 
man. It has been used for ages by the peoples of the Old 
World. Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs was a great 

wheat land, and there 
are pictures on the walls 
of some of the Egyp- 
tian tombs showing 
how wheat was raised 
there in those ancient 
days. Wheat is now 
grown in many parts of 
the world. Great quan- 

The Wheat Region. . . ^ ., , i 

titles oi it are proauced 
in India, France, and Russia, and there are vast wheat 
lands in Australia and in the valley of La Plata River in 
South America. 

Although wheat was not known in this hemisphere 




A WHEAT FARM. 



65 



before Columbus came, our continent now produces more 
wheat than any of the other grand divisions of the globe. 
The United States grows more wheat than any other coun- 
try. The people of Europe, to a large extent, eat flour 
made from our wheat. We send millions of bushels of 
this grain every year across the Atlantic, and, with the 
single exception of cotton, we get more for our wheat 
from foreign countries than for any other crop. 

Wheat is grown in nearly all parts of the United States, 
but our best wheat lands are those which lie north of 
the Ohio and Missouri rivers. In Minnesota and in the 
Dakotas there is a region known as the Red River Valley. 
The wheat farms there are of vast extent, and they are 
managed on a grand scale. Each big farm has its own 
bookkeeper and its overseers. It employs hundreds of 
men, and it purchases its machinery and supplies by the 
carload, at wholesale rates. On one wheat farm in North 
Dakota there are 
two hundred and 
fifty pairs of 
work horses and 
mules, tw^o hun- 
dred plows, a 
hundred and fif- 
teen harvesting 
machines, and 
twenty thrash- 
ing machines 
run by steam. 

When the grain is ripe, four hundred men are employed 
to harvest it, and at the time of thrashing there are six 
hundred at work. 

But suppose we visit a big Dakota wheat farm. The 




A Sulky Plow. 



1 66 



THE NORTHWEST. 



farm comprises thousands of acres, and in going over it we 
ride all day on horseback. Some of the fields contain 
as much as five hundred acres each. The men working 
in them labor in companies, under mounted overseers, who 
gallop from one company to another to see that everything 
is properly done. In plowing the ground, sometimes a 
score of sulky plows, driven by men who sit on the plows, 
will move across the field together. They will plow several 
acres of ground at a single trip, and thus riding over the 
prairie turn under the tough sod. 

The ground is harrowed in much the same way, and the 
wheat is drilled in by seeders, or grain drills. These drills 

are long boxes mounted 
-. upon wheels. Each box 

is filled with wheat. From 
its bottom running down 
to the ground are slender 
tubes aboutas bigaround 
as the end of a broom- 
stick. Down these tubes 
the grains of wheat run 
just fast enough to thor- 
oughly seed the ground. 
Behind each tube there is a little plow, which covers up the 
grain. Each drill is drawn by two, three, or four horses, 
and a long line of them will plant a vast tract of wheat in 
a very short time. 

But let us suppose that our visit to this region is made 
when the wheat is ready for harvest. This time is later 
than harvest time in the warmer wheat lands farther south. 
Harvesting on these big farms is a wonderful sight. The 
wheat is cut by long lines of reaping machines, or harvest- 
ers, pulled by horses or mules. The din of the machinery 




A Grain Drill. 



WHEAT HARVEST. 167 

makes us think of a boiler factory. We can hardly hear 
the voices of the drivers as they yell at their teams. 

As we draw nearer, we see that the most of the noise 
comes from the knives which are moving very rapidly back 
and forth a few inches above the ground, and cutting the 
stalks of grain so that they fall back upon the machine. 
There is a great reel which pushes the stalks and makes 
them fall with their heads all the same way. The reaper 
is so made that these stalks are rolled together in a bundle, 
and, when the bundle is just large enough, binds a band 
of wire or string about it, and throws it off the machine in 
sheaves. Behind the machines men walk, and pick up the 
bundles and stand them on end in shocks, that the wheat 
may become thoroughly dry before it is thrashed. 

Thrashing on one of these farms is far different from 
thrashing in other parts of the world. In some of the 
wheatfields of Europe the grains are still pounded out of 
the straw with a club. In China I have seen boys riding 
oxen over the straw, as it lay on the hard ground of the 
thrashing floor, in order that the feet of the animals might 
tread out the grain. In the Red River Valley the most of 
the work is done by steam engines which move the wheels 
of the thrashing machines. Each thrasher will hull out 
more than one thousand bushels of wheat in a day, thus 
doing the work of hundreds of oxen or thousands of 
clubs or flails. Our thrashers separate the grain from the 
chaff and straw, and the clean wheat flows out through a 
wooden pipe at the side so fast that it keeps two men busy 
holding bags in order that all the grain may be caught. 
On some very large farms the work of cutting and thrash- 
ing is done at the same time by a combined harv^ester and 
thrasher. Some of these great machines are drawn by 
steam engines; others by teams of from twenty-five to 

CARP. N. AM. — II 



68 



THE NORTHWEST. 




Combined Harvester and Thrasher. 



thirty horses and mules. A single machine with four men 
will gather and thrash from seventeen hundred to three 
thousand bushels of wheat in a day. 

But how is the wheat cared for after it leaves the fields ? 

This is almost as great a business as raising the wheat. 
At some of the railroad stations in the wheat regions, and 
at all the large grain ports of the United States, there are 
huge elevators, or granaries, used for storing grain until it 
is wanted for sale. 

There are such granaries at New York and New Orleans, 
and at all the large cities upon the Great Lakes. We 
find many of them at Minneapolis, and learn that single 
elevators often have storage room for more than a million 
bushels of grain. The elevators at MinneapoHs alone can 
hold almost thirty million bushels at one time, and many 



GRAIN ELEVATORS. 



169 



million bushels of wheat come into the Minneapolis mar- 
kets in a single year. 

Elevators are usually built by the sides of the railroad 
tracks, and the wheat is taken from the cars directly into 
them. Each elevator contains great bins, some of which 
are as high as a six-story house. Some of the bins will 




Elevators — Chicago. 



hold thousands of bushels of wheat. The grain is moved 
to the upper parts of the elevator in little buckets of tin or 
zinc, fastened to a belt, like those which raise the flour in 
a mill. At the top of the elevator the wheat is weighed ; 
then it is poured into the deep bins. When it is taken 
out it flows through pipes into the cars or the ships which 
are to carry it to the markets. 



170 



THE NORTHWEST, 



There are elevators of this kind at the ports at the head 
of Lake Superior, into which the grain is taken from the 
cars, and later on poured into the steamers which are to 
take it down the Great Lakes to Buffalo, whence it is car- 
ried through the Erie Canal to New York, to be shipped 
to Europe. Some grain is loaded on boats and barges and 
shipped down the Mississippi River; but the greater part 
goes by the lakes, as this route is the shortest way to the 
markets of the East. 

We find Minneapolis a magnificent city of more than a 
quarter of a milhon inhabitants. It is situated on the Mis- 




Falls of St. Anthony. 



sissippi, at the Falls of St. Anthony. These falls furnish 
a water power as great as could be given by forty thou- 




Minnehaha Falls, Minnesota. 



THE "TWIN CITIES." ^7^ 

sand horses all pulling at once, and their situation so near 
our wheat lands has made Minneapolis one of the chief 
milling centers of the world. There are numbers of big 
flour mills here which are grinding away day and night. 
Thev grind miUions of barrels of flour every year, one single 
milf grinding as much as twenty thousand barrels of flour 

in a dav. 

The mighty Mississippi does other work here m addition 
to grinding wheat. Its water power runs all kinds of fac- 
tories. Great woolen mills are operated by it. It saws 
vast quantities of lumber, and moves the other machinery 
which makes MinneapoUs the manufacturing center of this 
part of our country. 

Very close to MinneapoUs is the big city of St. Paul, 
which 'is also a thriving commercial and manufacturing 
center. The two towns are called the ''Twin Cities of the 
Northwest." They contain some of the finest business 
blocks in our country, and in both of them we may ride 
for miles through well-paved avenues, Hned with beautiful 
houses. The two cities now almost join, although their 
business centers are about ten miles apart. We can ride 
from one to the other in a few minutes on electric or 
steam railroads, and the day will soon come when there 
will be at this point one vast city. 

The growth of these two cities is due to their situation 
at the head of navigation of the Mississippi River, at the 
Falls of St. Anthony, and to their nearness to the head of 
navigation on the Great Lakes. Goods can thus be sent 
from them by water down the Mississippi, and also, after 
a short ride of one hundred and fifty miles on the railroad, 
down the Great Lakes, whence they may be carried to every 
part of our country, and to the seaports where they may 
be shipped to Europe. 



172 THE GREAT LAKES. 



XXII. A JOURNEY ON THE GREAT LAKES. 

A SHORT railroad ride from St. Paul brings us to Du- 
luth, at the head of Lake Superior. Duluth is built 
upon the sides of steep and rocky hills about a little harbor. 
Bowlders of granite jut out of the ground in every city 
lot, and the houses are founded upon the rocks. The 
streets rise from the wharves in terraces running backward, 
so that the lines of houses make us think of the seats of the 
grand stand in a baseball ground. Not far away, to the 
right as we face the lake, we can see the immense eleva- 
tors of Superior city ; and as we look at the many vessels 
in the harbor, we realize that we are at the head of navi- 
gation of the Great Lakes. 

Look at that steamboat lying under the shadow of a huge 
wheat elevator at the wharves of Duluth ! We have never 
seen a boat like that before. It is more Hke an enormous 
barrel than a steamship, and as it lies there in the water it 
makes us think of some sea monster or giant whale. 
Still, the steam is puffing out of the pipes at its prow, and 
volumes of black smoke are flowing out of its huge smoke- 
stacks. That is one of the famous whaleback steamships 
which carry iron ore and grain from Duluth down the 
Great Lakes. It is now being filled with wheat. We can 
see the grain pouring into its hold from the pipes which run 
down into it from the elevator. Thousands of bushels of 
grain will be thus stored away within a few hours, and the 
load it will carry will be more than could be hauled by a 
train of two-horse wagons ten miles in length. 

At the same wharf there are other ships which will carry 
thousands of bushels of wheat at a load ; and moving about 
in the harbor are immense grain barges, which are pulled 



DULUTH AND SUPERIOR. 



173 



by smaller steamers, one little steamboat dragging a long 
line of bigger boats behind it. 

The chain of Great Lakes forms one of the chief com- 
mercial highways of the globe. The upper portions of 
these lakes are frozen during the winter, and for five 
months they are almost as deserted as the icy seas about 
the north pole. It is only during the seven warmer months 




A Whaleback. 



that ships can navigate them; but in this time more 
freight is carried upon them than all that is brought into 
Liverpool or London in a whole year. 

During the summer months, day and night, there moves 
over this great waterway an almost endless fleet of steel 
steamships, white-winged sailboats, massive barges, mon- 
ster whalebacks, and magnificent passenger steamers, car- 
rying thousands of people and millions of tons of freight 



174 



THE GREAT LAKES. 



to and fro. There are ships which carry nothing but iron 
ore from the mines about Lake Superior, down to Cleve- 
land, Chicago, and other ports. There are ships loaded 
with copper from the mines of the Michigan peninsula, and- 
vast rafts of lumber from the pine forests of the upper 
lakes. 

Were it not for these lakes our immense harvests of grain 
could hardly be taken to the seaboard. That whaleback 
will steam out with its great load of seventy thousand 




Ore Docks at Duluth. 



bushels of wheat to Buffalo, or it may even pass through 
the Welland Canal and go on down through Lake Ontario 
into the St. Lawrence River, and out across the Atlantic to 
the seaports of Europe. There is a navigable waterway 



THE BASIN OF THE LAKES. 1 75 

from Duluth to the sea, and if the destination of our whale- 
back is Liverpool, it will have to travel more than half of 
its voyage in fresh water before it gets to the Atlantic 
Ocean, at the Strait of Belle Isle. 

The journey can be made so cheaply that for a very few 
cents a bushel of wheat can be taken to Buffalo, and for 
thirty cents or less a ton of coal can be brought in the 
same ship back to Duluth. The cost of carrying goods by 
water in this way is less than half the cost of carrying them 
on the railroads. It is this cheapness that has caused many 
towns and cities to spring up at the good harbors along the 
Great Lakes, and at the channels between them, and it is 
to these cheap freights that many other cities owe much 
of their wealth. 

But before we go farther, I must tell you a curious thing 
about this valley or basin in which these vast fresh-water 
seas lie. It is situated almost on the Height of Land, on 
the crown of the eastern part of North America, so that 
over the rim of the basin the ground on the north slopes 
toward Hudson Bay, and on the south toward the Gulf 
of Mexico. The rim of the basin of the Great Lakes is 
not very high, and canals have been cut from Lake Erie 
south to the Ohio River, so that freight from the Great 
Lakes in this way goes to the Gulf of Mexico. A canal 
is also being opened from the lower end of Lake Michigan 
to the Mississippi River, and the Erie Canal takes vast 
quantities of freight from Lake Erie at Buffalo across New 
York to the Hudson River, whence it goes by water to 
New York city. It is also said that men can sail in canoes 
up the streams flowing south into Lake Superior, and, by 
carrying their boats a very short distance, can drop them 
into streams which flow into Hudson Bay. 

Another curious thing about the basin of the Great 



176 THE GREAT LAKES. 

Lakes is its shape. It is formed of three great terraces, 
lying one above the other. The top terrace is Lake Su- 
perior, the level of which is six hundred feet above the sea. 
From Lake Superior to the second terrace there is a drop 
of about twenty feet, and there we find the level of Lakes 



,..u...,c. 




^ 


^^-^_. 


t^'> 


^^ 


^™.. 






m 




rtl. 


A„A 


T.,T^ 




~°^3^ 



Diagram Showing the Lake Terraces. 

Huron, Michigan, arid Erie. The third drop, to the level 
of Lake Ontario, is much greater, and the ground slopes 
down the valley of the St. Lawrence to the sea. 

But how do the great ships get from one of these ter- 
races to the other? 

They cannot go from Lake Ontario up the swift Niagara 
River, and climb over the falls; nor can they possibly 
make their way up the raging, rocky rapids of the St. 
Marys River, over which the waters of Lake Superior 
foam as they rush on toward Lake Huron. No ; this 
is plainly impossible. The ships must be lifted from one 
level to another through ship canals. Such canals have 
been built between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, and 
around the Falls of the St. Marys, below Lake Superior; 
and in these, by means of locks, the heavy boats are like- 
wise lowered from one terrace to the other. By many other 
locks they are lowered, step by step, through other canals, 
past the rapids of the St. Lawrence, until at last, having 
dropped from a height greater than that of the Washing- 



ST. MARYS FALLS CANAL. 



n 



ton Monument, they float on the Atlantic Ocean. It is by 
means of the same locks that they climb back again, ves- 
sels weighing- thousands of tons being lifted up and down. 

Let us sail from Lake Superior down into Lake Huron, 
and see how this is done. Our ship is a steel steamer of 
three thousand tons. It is floating on Lake Superior, and 
must be let down to the level of Lake Huron, which is 
twenty feet lower. 

This will be done while passing through the St. Marys 
Falls Canal. It is commonly known as the *' Soo " Canal, 




Lock — St. Marys Falls Canal. 

and is one of the greatest works of its kind in the world. 
It is about ten miles long, and forms a waterway around 
the rapids of the St. Marys River. Every seven months 
more than ten thousand vessels pass through it, and all of 
these ships have to be raised or lowered over this step 
twenty feet high between the two lakes. 

We .steam for some distance through the canal, until at 
last we pass, with another big steamer, between two stone 



178 THE GREAT LAKES. 

walls as high as a three-story house. They do not seem 
so high to us, for our ship floats between them on the top 
of the water, which is now at the level of Lake Superior. 
We are in the famous lock of the '* Soo " Canal, the 
largest lock in the world. The upper deck of the steamer 
is far above the walls, and from it we can see, not far away 
to the left, the raging St. Marys River, which roars and 
froths as it tumbles down the rapids. 

The water in the lock is as calm as a mill pond. It is 
held back by two large, water-tight gates of wood and iron. 
As our ship comes to rest, we step off upon the walls of 
the lock, and walk to the gates, over which we can look 
down into the canal, where it opens into the smooth ex- 
panse of the river below the rapids. The water there is 
twenty feet lower than that in the lock. If the gates were 
opened, the two ships would be hurled down by the great 
rush of the waters. By means of the lock they are to be 
lowered so gently that, did we shut our eyes, we could 
hardly tell we were sinking. 

How is this done ? 

The water itself, aided by a steam engine, performs the 
work. At the entrance of the lock there are two gates 
like those before us. These are closed by the engine, 
keeping the waters of Lake Superior back for the time. 
The ships are now in a great box of water. The engineer 
moves another lever, and holes in the bottom of the box 
are opened. The water gradually flows out, and the great 
ships sink down with it until they are on the level of the 
canal below. Then the front gates are opened, and we 
can steam on our way as easily as though there had been 
no steep step to climb down. The waters of St. Marys 
River for the remaining fifty miles of its course are on the 
same level as those of Lake Huron. 



THE IRON REGIONS. 



179 



There are two canals around the St. Marys Falls, one of 
which is on the Canadian side of the river. There are 
twenty-six locks in the Welland Ship Canal about Nia- 
gara Falls, for the step down from Lake Erie to Lake 
Ontario is more than fifteen times as high as that be- 
tween Lake Huron and Lake Superior. So the ships are 
lifted up or down only a little at a time until they have 
passed through the canal, which is twenty-six miles long. 
There are other locks on the canals lower down about the 
rapids of the St. Lawrence, and there are many smaller locks 
in the Erie Canal between BufTalo and the Hudson River. 



XXHI. THE IRON AND COPPER MINES OF 
LAKE SUPERIOR. 



BEFORE leaving Lake Superior, we must visit the iron 
and copper regions which are found not far from its 
shores. The wealth of the United States is not in its good 
soil alone. A vast part of our riches comes from our min- 
erals. We now produce 
more iron and copper 
than any other country, 
and in 1890 more than 
one fourth of the iron 
manufactured in the 
whole world came from 
the mines of the United 
States. For many years 

^ , -r. •, • 1 1 The Iron Regions. 

Great Bntam has been 

the chief iron-making nation of the earth ; but now the 

United States is ahead. It is our iron and coal which 




l8o THE GREAT LAKES. 

make us the chief manufacturing nation of the world ; and 
our supplies of these materials are so vast that the United 
States will grow greater and greater as they are developed. 

There is no continent which has such vast beds of iron 
ore as North America. There is some iron in the West 
Indies, in Central America, and in Mexico, and a httle in 
Canada. In the United States iron is found almost every- 
where. It is mined in twenty-six different states and terri- 
tories. There are vast iron beds in Tennessee, Alabama, 
and northwestern Georgia; there are also valuable iron 
mines in Pennsylvania ; but our richest iron beds are about 
Lake Superior. It is from the Lake Superior mines that 
more than half the iron ore produced in the United States 
comes. Many of our large manufacturing cities rely upon 
this region for all the iron they use, and a fleet of fast 
steamers is kept busy carrying the ore down the Great 
Lakes to the furnaces where it is to be made into the iron 
of commerce. The chief article of freight upon the lakes, 
in fact, is iron ore, although, as we have seen, wheat, lum- 
ber, and other things by the thousands of tons are carried 
on them. 

Iron in a state of nature is never found pure. As it lies 
in the earth, it is in veins or pockets, walled about with 
rock, and so mixed with stone that you cannot dig out 
a piece of iron that is perfectly pure. It is only by melt- 
ing the iron with limestone, in a peculiar way called smelt- 
ing, that we can get the pure iron out of the rock in which 
it is mixed. 

Now smelting requires good coal. But there are no 
good coal fields within many hundreds of miles of Lake 
Superior. The iron can be taken to the coal easier than 
the coal can be brought to the iron. So the heavy iron 
ore is carried down through the Great Lakes to Detroit, 



IN AN IRON MINE. l8l 

Toledo, Cleveland, Buffalo, Pittsburg, Chicago, and other 
points, to which the coal can be more cheaply transported. 
At these cities the coal and iron can easily be brought to- 
gether, and hence we find them large manufacturing points. 

But let me tell you something about the iron mines of 
the Lake Superior region. They lie south and west of the 
lake, in five little ranges of mountains. The best of the 
mines are from fifteen to one hundred miles back from 
the water, on the mountains, about a quarter of a mile 
higher than the level of the lake. Here there are great 
steam engines, enormous machines for pumping the water 
out of the mines, engines for compressing the air which 
drives the long steel drills into the rocky ore, so that dy- 
namite candles can be inserted and the huge pieces of iron- 
stone blasted down. 

But suppose we take a look into one of the mines. We 
go down an inclined plane more than a thousand feet in a 
little ore car, and find ourselves in a network of great tun- 
nels. There are electric lights everywhere, and the tunnels 
are almost as bright as day. Now and then we hear the 
boom ! boom ! boom ! of the blasting going on in other 
parts of the mine. The sound shakes the air, and we 
fear lest the walls of the mine may fall down upon us. 
About us there are sooty-faced men, who lift up the great 
pieces of iron ore and throw them into little steel cars, 
which are to be carried by machinery to the surface. 

Now we are again at the top. A car loaded with ore 
comes close behind us. Let us wait and go with it, and 
see how the ore is put in the ship. The slope of the rail- 
road from the mines to the lakes is so great that the cars 
run down by their own weight. 

The railroad track is built upon a great trestlework of 
steel almost a quarter of a mile out into the lake. It is 



l82 



THE GREAT LAKES. 



built high up above the water. Near the end of the trestle- 
work there are a number of big pockets, or bins, into which 
the ore is dumped from the cars. These bins are so high 
above the water that the iron- ore steamers can sail right 
under them ; hence, by opening a door at the bottom, the 
ore can be dropped down into the holds of the steamers. 
In this way thousands of tons of iron can be loaded in a 
very few hours. 

Our car goes rushing down this track. It thunders out 
over the trestlework, and we see the red- and- brown iron- 
stone dropped down into the bin. As we look, an ore 
steamer approaches, and a few hours later the ore is on its 
way to the furnaces. Could we follow it we should see it 
dumped out on other great piles of ore, on the wharves of 
Cleveland or some other lake city. A few days later it 
will perhaps be in an iron foundry, and may come out in 
the form of a steel rail to make part of a railroad on the 
great plains. 

It is said that the richest copper mines of Lake Superior 
were discovered by a pig. These mines are situated on the 

Keweenaw Peninsula, 
the upper part of Mich- 
igan, which juts out into 
the lake. This penin- 
sula is barren and rocky. 
It is not good for farm- 
ing, but its rich copper 
beds have caused cities 
to be built, and there 
are now thousands of 
people living there. 
According to the story, a pig had strayed from the drove 
to which it belonged, and had fallen into a pit. In trying 




The Copper Regions. 



THE COPPER REGIONS. 1 83 

to root its way out, it uncovered a great mass of copper, 
and showed the world the site of one of the best copper 
mines that has ever been discovered. Vast fortunes have 
been made out of it, and several thousand men are now at 
work day and night in getting out the copper which lies 
buried there. 

This mine is the famous Calumet and Hecla copper mine. 
It is in a sHce of rock varying in width from that of the 
average parlor to the average hall, or from ten to fifteen 
feet wide, going down, down into the earth. This slice of 
rock is streaked and veined with almost pure copper. 
Some bits of the copper are so pure that they might al- 
most be hammered into pennies, and one twentieth of the 
whole mass is copper. 

There are many other mines in the Lake Superior region, 
but none so rich as this. The miners are now working 
more than a half-mile below the surface of the earth, and 
enormous steam engines haul up the steel cars filled with 
copper ore mixed with rock. Each car holds what would 
be a load for four horses. The ore is taken from the mines 
to the stamping mills not far away, and is there crushed 
into powder, so that the stone can be washed from the 
copper. 

Copper, unlike iron, is often found in its pure state. It 
seldom combines with other minerals, although silver is 
sometimes mixed with it. The copper of Lake Superior 
is often found in solid masses, some of which weigh as 
much as five or six hundred tons. Such masses are broken 
up when possible, and the pieces are put into barrels and 
shipped down the lakes for smelting. 

There are also smelting furnaces not far from the mines. 
Let us go to one of them and see the copper ore turned into 
bright bricks of reddish yellow. The copper, mixed with 

CARP. N. AM. — 12 



l84 THE GREAT LAKES. 

coal and limestone, is put into the furnace. The fires are 
lighted, and the intense heat soon causes the whole to be- 
come one seething mass. Then a hole at the bottom of 
the furnace is opened, and a reddish-golden stream flows 
out. How hot it is! The stream is so bright that it 
dazzles our eyes. It makes us think of the sun when it 
sets like a great round red ball of fire in a clear sky. 

As the copper flows out of the furnace, it is caught in 
long-handled iron dippers by men, who carry it, bubbling 
and blazing, to a set of iron molds fastened to a frame at 
the edge of a water trough. They pour the golden liquid 
into the molds. It hardens almost as soon as it touches 
the iron, and other men lift the molds with hooks, and turn 
them over, so that the metal, now^ in the shape of bricks, falls 
out into the trough. The water soon cools the hot copper. 

Each brick is about two feet long, six inches wide, and 
four inches thick. It weighs about one hundred and thirty- 
five pounds. It is the color of a polished copper kettle, 
and it is now ready to be turned into wire, to be used for 
electrical machines or the making of brass, or even to be 
sent to our mint to be stamped into one-cent pieces. 

Equally great, if not greater, than the Lake Superior 
copper region is that of Montana, of which we may see 
something during our travels in the western part of our 
country. 

XXIV. LIFE IN THE LUMBER REGIONS. 

WE shall spend the most of to-day in the woods, for 
some of the largest forests of the United States are 
to be found in the region of the Great Lakes. When our 
country was first discovered, almost all the land between 



THE FORESTS. 



'5 



the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River was one dense 
woods of pine, oak, maple, beech, and other trees. There 
were so many trees that no one thought of saving them. 
The settlers cut them down as fast as they could, in order 




Lumberinf 



to use the land for farming. They piled the trees up where 
they fell, and burned them. This work went on for many 
years, and in this way some of the most valuable timber 
in the United States has been lost. 

There are, however, vast forests left in some parts of our 
country. The great pine lands of Maine still furnish lum- 
ber for many parts of the East. We traveled for miles 
through pine and cypress trees in our journeys along the 
South Atlantic coast and the lower Mississippi, and we 



1 86 THE GREAT LAKES. 

shall find wonderful trees in California and Oregon, and in 
the region about Puget Sound. 

The forests of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan are 
so dense that you might get lost in them and travel for 
weeks without finding your way out. As we sailed up the 
Mississippi from St. Louis to St. Paul, we passed thousands 
of logs which were floating down the river toward the Gulf 
of Mexico. They had come from the forests of Minnesota 
and Wisconsin. They had been hauled upon the snow to 
the rivers and smaller streams which flow into the Missis- 
sippi, and were on their way to the markets. As we travel 
on down through the Great Lakes we shall meet other rafts 
of logs, which are towed by steamers ; and at many of the 
ports we shall hear the scream of the gang saw as it cuts 
the logs into boards. 

We use wood in a thousand different ways, and we ship 
quantities of it to Europe and Asia. We cut down so 
many trees every year, in fact, that if they could all be 
collected together we should have enough lumber to make 
a wooden track a foot thick, and more than twice as wide 
as the average country road, entirely round the world. 

Lumbering in the Great Lakes region can be carried on 
only when the snow is on the ground. The cutting down 
of the trees is done by men who go into the woods in the 
fall and remain there all winter. They build big log cab- 
ins, filling the cracks between the logs with mud and sod. 
They have horses and often oxen with them, and for these 
they build stables. Often fifty men will live in one large 
cabin. They sleep in bunks, put up along the walls, and 
eat together at a common table, using tin plates and other 
dishes which will not easily break. They take enough 
provisions with them to last all winter. Each gang has its 
own cook, and the bill of fare of pork and beans, canned 



LUMBERING. 



187 



meats, and hot bread is often varied by a venison stew or 
bear steak from game shot upon the ground. 

In chopping, everything is done according to order. 
First, a man known as the underchopper goes through the 
forest and marks the trees to be cut. He knows what 
trees will make the best lumber. Then come the choppers 




A Big Load of Log's. 



and sawyers. A cut is first made in the tree with a long 
saw, which is pulled back and forth by a man at each 
end. Then the choppers with their axes chop above 
and beyond the saw cut until at last the great trunk is 
chopped through, and the giant of the forest falls with a crash 
to the ground. The limbs must now be trimmed off, and 
the logs sawed into the right lengths by a cross-cut saw. 



i88 



THE GREAT LAKES. 



The next thing is to get the logs to the stream. This is 
done on sledges, pulled by two or more horses over a 
road of snow or ice. In this way horses can haul many 
times as much as they could on a common road with a 
wagon. Sometimes a load of logs big enough to fill an 
ordinary bedroom from floor to ceiling is thus carried to 
the river or other stream. The first thing to be done is the 
making of the road. The snow is beaten down, then a 
sprinkling machine is used, and the water, freezing as it 
falls, forms a road of ice, over w^hich the great loads can be 
easily pulled. 

The streams to which the logs are carried are frozen in 
the winter, and the heavy logs are rolled off upon the ice, 
so that for a long distance the whole .stream is bridged with 
logs. The ice is perhaps several feet thick, and it does not 
break under the great w^eight. 

In the spring, w^ien the thaw comes, the ice melts, the 
streams rise, and a freshet carries the logs down into the 

lakes, or into the Mis- 
sissippi or other rivers. 
Several men go with 
each collection, or 
I *' drive," of logs, in or- 

der to keep it moving 
and to prevent the logs 
from being scattered. 
The men jump from 
log to log, and are 
always watching to see that none lodge on stones or 
against the banks, for then the logs coming behind would 
be stopped and would cause a jam. These men have the 
soles of their boots covered with sharp nails in order to 
give them a sure footing. They have hooks and spikes 




Drive " of Logs. 



LUMBERING. 189 

on long poles, with which they push and pull the logs this 
way and that. When a jam occurs, the logs become piled 
one on top of another. They act more like animals than 
wood. Some dive under the jam, some stand on end 
against it, and others climb up on top. After a short 
while they are so wedged together that you would think 
they could never be gotten apart. The logger, however, 
goes to the front of the jam, and with his pike, inch by 
inch, pulls out the logs forming the keystone, as it were, of 
the jam, and then the whole mass comes tumbling down 
into the river. 

With nearly every gang of loggers there is a cook, who 
usually calls the men to meals by blowing upon a tin horn. 
Sometimes cabins are built on rafts, the rafts are floated 
down the river behind the logs, and in the cabins the cook- 
ing is done, and there the men sleep at night. 

There are many sawmills along Lake Michigan, in which 
logs are sawed up into lumber ready to be shipped upon 
boats down the lakes. Some of the mills have what are 
know as gang saws, a number of saws moving up and 
down by machinery through a log, and sawing the whole 
log into boards at once. Others have what is known as the 
band saw. This is a wide belt of steel, one edge of which 
has teeth just like a saw. The band saw moves like a band 
of leather upon two great wheels, one high above the other. 
As the steel belt moves, the teeth in the front side of it saw 
through the logs, so that boards are thus made faster, it is 
said, than even the gang saws can cut them. The best of 
the pine lumber is used for the woodwork and finishing of 
houses. A large part of the refuse is turned into shingles, 
the bark and sawdust are used for fuel, and these great saw- 
mills are so managed that almost every particle of the tree 
is made to serve some purpose. 



IQO THE GREAT LAKES. 



XXV. OUR GREAT CITIES ON THE LAKES. 

AS we sail down the lakes, we stop at some of the great 
cities which have been built up because of the facilities 
these waterways have given them for cheap transportation, 
manufacturing, and commerce. 

We pass ships loaded with lumber and iron as we leave 
Lake Huron and sail through the green expanse known as 
the St. Clair Flats, and into the Detroit River; and we 
learn that much lumber and iron are unloaded at Detroit. 

Detroit is the largest city in Michigan. It lies on the 
west bank of the Detroit River, at a natural crossing be- 
tween Canada and the United States. It is so situated that 
goods can be shipped from it by rail and water to all parts 
of the country. We find, therefore, that it has large car 
shops and other wood-working establishments. The com- 
merce of the Detroit River is so great that, on an average, 
a vessel of some kind passes Detroit every seven and a half 
minutes during the season. The city has beautiful resi- 
dences, and we enjoy our tour through its wide streets, 
upon which we walk in the shade of magnificent elm and 
maple trees. 

From Detroit it is but a few hours' ride to Toledo, a 
large and prosperous city at the western end of Lake Erie. 
Farther on, about the middle of the southern shore of the 
lake, is the great port of Cleveland, celebrated for its manu- 
factures of coal oil, iron ships for the lake trade, and all 
kinds of machinery. The city is situated at the mouth of 
the Cuyahoga River. We sail into the river, past enor- 
mous docks piled high with iron ore brought down from 
Lake Superior. 

Cleveland is said to be the greatest iron- ore market in 



CLEVELAND. 



191 



the world. The mines which we have visited along Lake 
Superior are largely owned by Cleveland men, and many 
of the steel steamers which carry the ore down the lakes 
are built in Cleveland. We learn that the rich coal fields 
of Ohio and Pennsylvania are not far from this point, and 



!• 


; 


m 


1 




" ■ 


-^'WBi 


1^ 



A Park Scene in Cleveland. 



thus see that Cleveland can have cheap coal and cheap iron, 
which, together with its cheap water transportation, aid in 
making it so thriving a manufacturing city. 

We take a walk through Cleveland, stopping for a mo- 
ment upon the great stone viaduct which crosses the Cuya- 
hoga River, uniting the east and west sides of the city, and 
then go on into Superior Street and visit the chief business 
portions of the town. 

We stop in the beautiful park in the center of Cleveland 
to take a look at the bronze statue of Captain Perry, rep- 



192 



THE GREAT LAKES. 



resenting him as he looked when he so bravely charged 
and captured the British squadron on Lake Erie, in the 
War of 1 812. Perry was only twenty-seven years old at 
the time of that battle. The British expected an easy vic- 
tory, but he defeated them ; and in sending the news of 
his triumph to General W. H. Harrison, he used the words 
which have since become historical : 

** We have met the enemy, and they are ours." 
A walk upon Euclid Avenue shows us one of the finest 
streets in the world. The residences are of stone, wood, 
and brick, and of all styles of architecture. Their chief 

beauty, however, lies in 
the velvety lawns which 
surround the houses, and 
in the old forest trees 
which make each side 
of the street look like a 
great park. 

We next visit the 
beautiful cemetery near 
the lake to see the mar- 
ble monument under 
which President Garfield 
lies buried. Then, com- 
ing back to the wharf, 
we continue our trip on 
Lake Erie to Buffalo. 
Our huge .steamer moves smoothly and majestically over 
the waves. We go to bed in our cabins shortly after leav- 
ing, and awake in the morning to find ourselves in front 
of the city of Buffalo. Buffalo is situated at the chief 
gateway between the sea and the vast regions of the upper 
lakes. Not far from it is the head of the Welland Canal, 




Tomb of President Garfield. 



BUFFALO. 



193 




The Harbor at Buffalo. 

which connects Lake Erie with Lake Ontario and the St. 
Lawrence ; and the Erie Canal, with its terminus at Buffalo, 
connects the lakes with the great ocean commerce which 
reaches us by way of New York and through the Hudson 
River. The latter waterway has so cheapened the carrying 
of freight to the interior of our country that Buffalo has 
become a great port. 

It is wonderful how a new waterway will often change 
the commerce of a country. The digging of the Erie 
Canal largely aided in making New York the greatest city 
in the United States. Before this canal was built, it was 
cheaper to send freight across the mountains to Pittsburg. 
It then took twenty days and cost one hundred dollars to 
carry a ton of goods from Buffalo to New York. When the 



194 THE GREAT LAKES. 

canal was finished it cost at first only fourteen dollars a ton ; 
and now you can send things from New York to Buffalo 
for one dollar a ton, and some articles cost less than fifty 
cents a ton. 

Before the canal was built, wheat was a very expensive 
article in the eastern states. In some places wheat bread 
was a luxury, and not to be used as a colnmon food. Rye 
flour and corn meal took the place of wheat flour. It is 
through cheap water transportation that we are able to get 
flour at such low prices. How would you like to carry a 
bushel of wheat hundreds of miles for two cents? It now 
costs only about two cents to carry a bushel of wheat from 
Buffalo to New York by way of the Erie Canal, and the 
freight rates on the Great Lakes above are so low that the 
wheat we saw loaded in Duluth will be landed in Buffalo 
for something like three cents a bushel ; so that it costs less 
than ten cents a bushel to bring grain from the Red River 
Valley to New York. The freight on flour is very cheap, 
and the bread which we shall eat at our dinner to-day in 
Buffalo was probably made from flour that came more 
than a thousand miles on the lakes. 

The freight on iron ore from the mines of Lake Supe- 
rior to Buffalo is often less than half a cent a pound, 
while the ore steamers will carry coal from here back to 
Duluth for from fifteen to thirty cents a ton. A ton of 
coal is a good wagonload for two horses on a country road. 
Think of carrying a wagonload of stuff from Buffalo to 
Duluth for fifteen cents, and you can see how cheaply 
goods are now taken from one part of our land to another 
by means of the lakes. 

With such advantages, what should we expect to find 
here at Buffalo ? 

We should look for grain elevators for storing this wheat 



NIAGARA FALLS. 195 

until it can be shipped from the lakes to the canal. Well, 
there are fifty- one such elevators at Buffalo, and the city 
claims to be the chief grain-shipping port of the world. 
We should also expect to find flour mills. Buffalo has so 
many of them that they grind out more than a million 
barrels of flour a year. There are rich coal fields in New 
York and Pennsylvania, not far south of Buffalo, and we 
therefore see vast coal trestles for loading hard and soft 
coal upon the steamers. Near them are the iron-ore docks ; 
and not far away we find machine shops, foundries, and 
factories, in which are made many kinds of merchandise. 
There are more than a hundred thousand persons here 
engaged in manufacturing, and we see that Buffalo is a rich 
and fast-growing city. 



XXVI. A VISIT TO NIAGARA FALLS. 

NIAGARA FALLS is only a few miles from Buffalo. 
We can take the steam railroad and get there in half 
an hour, or we can ride on an electric trolley car to view 
this wonderful work of nature. The trolley car carries us 
for miles along the Niagara River below the falls, and from 
it we can see the deep gorge through which the river runs, 
after its great tumble, on its way to Lake Ontario. 

The Niagara is one of the most wonderful rivers in the 
world. Some of its waters come from Lake Superior, and 
we have seen how they flow out of that great basin, 
through the St. Marys River, down to the level of Lake 
Huron. It was by means of the huge locks at the St. 
Marys Falls Canal that we were lifted down the twenty- 
foot step which lies between these two great lakes. We 



196 



THE GREAT LAKES. 



could not notice that we were going downhill as we sailed 
on through the Detroit River and across Lake Erie to Buf- 
falo, for the descent between the foot of the St. Marys 
Canal and the head of the Niagara River is very slight. 




Niagara Falls 

Here, however, the mighty waters are poured from the 
Erie basin into that of Lake Ontario, which is three hun- 
dred and thirty feet below. The Niagara River is the 



NIAGARA FALLS. 197 

great down spout through which they run. It is only 
thirty-three miles long, and it makes more than half of its 
descent in one jump at Niagara Falls. 

The volume of water which flows between the banks of 
the Niagara is so great that every minute more than half 
a million tons of water are dropped over the falls ; and the 
force with which this water descends is estimated to be 
greater than that of all the steam engines of our country 
working together. 

The course of the Niagara, as it runs from Lake Erie to 
Lake Ontario, is nearly due north. As it flows out of 
Lake Erie, the stream is almost as quiet as a mill pond, and 
at first the fall is not more than a foot to the mile. Shortly 
after leaving Lake Erie, the river divides and passes round 
Grand Island. At the lower end of this island it is more 
than a mile broad. It is still quiet, and it moves slowly 
on until it comes within a mile of the falls. 

Then the river becomes narrower, the rapids begin, and 
you see the waters boiling as they sweep among rocks 
and about islands. They seem to be rousing themselves 
up for their great jump. They foam as they dash about 
Goat Island, which lies on the edge of the falls, and then 
take their hundred-and-sixty-foot leap downward into the 
great abyss below. 

For the next seven miles the river flows through a ra- 
vine the banks of which rise almost straight upward for 
from two to three hundred feet above the water. The 
river seems to give out mighty sighs as it rushes between 
the banks. Its waters are churned about in w^hirlpools. 
They seethe and foam until they pass Lewiston, at the end 
of the gorge, when they suddenly become quiet and flow 
peacefully on into Lake Ontario. 

Our trolley car carries us to the village of Niagara Falls, 



198 



THE GREAT LAKES. 




Whirlpool and Rapids. 



a thriving town which has grown up for the accommoda- 
tion of the thousands of tourists who come here every sea- 
son. Near by is the State Reservation, surrounding the 
American side of the falls, and corresponding to it is Queen 
Victoria Park, which the Canadians have established on the 
opposite bank of the river. 

In former times much complaint was made of the extor- 
tion which the hack drivers and guides practiced at Niagara. 
Now everything is regulated by law, and we find we can 
make the trip very cheaply. There are coaches which take 
us across the suspension bridge and give us a tour of the 
islands and all the points of interest about the falls. Our 
round-trip tickets cost only fifteen cents, and we have the 
right to stop and wait for other coaches at the interesting 
places. 



NIAGARA FALLS. 1 99 

We first drive to Goat Island and see how the two great 
falls are divided by this high patch of green. On our 
right are the American Falls, as high but not so wide as the 
Horseshoe Falls, which extend, in the shape of a great 
crescent, to the shores of Canada, on our left. 

What a thick mist rises up from the water! How the 
river thunders as it goes over the rocks ! The noise is so 
great that it is said it can be heard forty miles away. The 
waters sparkle as they fall. They bubble and seethe and 
foam in angry motion in their bed below us. Now the sun 
comes out from behind a cloud. It darts its rays into the 
mist, and paints rainbows there. The rainbows change 
as we look, and new rainbows appear as the water dashes 
upward in a diamond spray. 

We stop on the bridge above the falls, and a Httle later 
go to the Cave of the Winds. This cave is right under 
the falls, and we must have a costume and a guide before 
we can undertake the journey. We can get both for a 
dollar. We put on rubber coats and caps, and rude pan- 
taloons or bloomers. Our feet are shod with felt slippers, 
in order that we may not slip, for the descent is by no 
means unattended with danger. Our guides take us down 
a wooden staircase along the rocks, until at last we are 
right under the splashing torrent. The noise almost deaf- 
ens us as we go into the cave, and as we stand there and 
look out, the sun peeps through the spray, and we have a 
curtain of rainbows. 

Another thrilling experience is our ride under the falls 
in the steamboat known as the Maid of the Mist. This 
little boat has powerful machinery, which carries it in and 
out among the rocks through the boiling waters from one 
side of the river to the other. 

We also visit the whirlpool, and the rapids above it ; and 

CARP. N. AM. — 13 



200 



THE GREAT LAKES. 




Maid of the Mist. 



then walk over the great steel suspension bridge which 
crosses the Niagara, connecting Canada with the United 

States. From 
here we get an- 
other fine view 
of the falls. 

The bridge It- 
self Is a wonder. 
It is hung right 
over the raging 
torrent. It is a 
mighty arch of 
steel, with a span 
of five hundred 
and thirty feet, 
said to be the 
largest span of 
this kind in the world. Its approaches are two hundred 
and ninety feet long, and the bridge weighs seven million 
tons. On its top there are two tracks for railroads, and 
below are wagonways, sidewalks, and trolley-car tracks. 

The first suspension bridge was put across this gorge 
more than half a century ago, and you will be Interested 
to know how boys aided In its construction. A civil en- 
gineer, Mr. Charles Ellet, had planned the bridge. He 
wished to get a line from one side to the other; so he 
offered a reward of five dollars to any one who could get 
a string across the chasm. The next windy day, scores of 
boys with kites in their hands were on the American bank 
of the river, and before night a lucky youth had landed his 
kite on the opposite side, and secured the reward. 

To the kite string there was now fastened a strong cord, 
and this was pulled from one side to the other. Then, by 



NIAGARA FALLS. 



20i 



means of the cord, a rope was drawn across the river. A 
cable made of wires about as thick as a man's thumb was 
tied to the rope. When the cable had been drawn across, 
its ends were fastened to wooden scaffolds built upon each 
side of the river. Now an iron basket was hung on the 
cable, so that the workmen could be drawn in it from one 
side to the other. 

Mr. Ellet was the first man who went over in the basket, 
and his trip across the river created a great sensation. 
Then stone towers were built. Heavy cables were carried 
across from one bank to the other, and little by little the 
suspension bridge was made. At first people would not 
trust themselves upon the bridge ; but after Mr. Ellet had 
driven a team of horses over it, they lost their fear, and it 




steel Arch Bridp^e across the Niagara. 



202 THE GREAT LAKES. 

came into general use. A few years later the first railroad 
suspension bridge was built, and now we have the mag- 
nificent structure upon which we cross to-day. 

Another wonderful piece of engineering connected with 
Niagara Falls is the tunnel which has been built to harness 
a part of this immense water power and make it work for 
man. The Niagara Tunnel is really a great pipe extend- 
ing about a mile from the level of the river above the falls 
to a point a short distance below them. In the tunnel, pits 
have been sunk for the insertion of immense turbine wheels, 
which are driven round and round by the water as it falls 
upon them. Attached to each wheel are dynamos for the 
generation of electricity, and the machinery is such that 
each wheel exerts as much force as five thousand horses 
all working at once. 

The electricity thus made is used to run many factories 
near the falls. Some of it goes through wires to Buffalo, 
to furnish power for the machine shops there ; and there 
are people who believe that modern invention will in the 
future so perfect the use of the Niagara water power that 
there will be a gigantic manufacturing city about the falls. 
Some think that, by means of wires, the power will be 
carried to Cleveland, Chicago, and New York, so that the 
falls will do the work of a hundred cities. 

Our next stop is to be at Pittsburg, and were all of this 
vast water power available, we might be carried there by 
means of the Niagara River. This, however, has yet to 
be accomplished, and we shall go on the old-fashioned 
railroad, with coal and steam, instead of water and elec- 
tricity, pushing our cars. 



THE FIRST OIL WELL. 203 



XXVII. TRAVELS IN THE OIL REGIONS. 

WE shall visit to-day some of the oil fields of the 
United States. There are parts of our country 
under which lie vast beds of porous rock, filled with coal 
oil and natural gas. The first oil field that was of prac- 
tical use to the world lies in northwestern Pennsylvania and 
southwestern New York, not far from Buffalo, on the 
western plateau of the Appalachian Mountains. This is 
the largest of our oil fields, and it is the one through which 
we shall travel to-day. 

We see signs of coal oil very soon after leaving Buffalo. 
We pass long railroad trains made up of huge iron cylin- 
ders filled with oil. We travel through regions where 
hundreds of derricks, or wooden frames for raising the oil, 
have been built up high above the earth. We see vast in- 
verted tubs of iron standing here and there on the sides of 
the tracks, and a smell of petroleum fills the air. Each of the 
derricks stands over an oil well. The inverted tubs are the 
iron tanks for storing the oil. Each of them holds from 
twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand barrels of oil. 
There are pipes covering the land like a network, which 
carry the oil here and there. The very earth seems greasy, 
and the streams are coated with the steel-blue skum of 
petroleum. 

We stop at Titusville, Pennsylvania, where the first oil 
well was sunk. This was in August, 1858. Before that, 
no one knew that there were enormous quantities of coal 
oil underground. Most people used candles of tallow or 
wax, or little wicks floating in saucers of tallow or sperm 
oil, for light. They did this even in the oil regions, not- 



204 



THE OIL REGIONS. 



withstanding some of the petroleum came out on the sur- 
face of the ground. 

Petroleum was then called rock oil, and the Indians laid 
cloths on the ground and soaked it up, in order to use it 
for medicine. It was supposed to be good for rheumatism 
and sore throat, and to make the hair grow. The farmers 




Oil Derrick and Tanks. 



thought it hurt the land, and it is said that one man sold 
out and moved off to Canada because the oil came out 
upon his ponds and spoiled the drinking water for his 
cattle. After oil was discovered, this farm brought a for- 
tune to its owner. 

Drake, the man who bored the first well near Titusville, 
thought that if there was so much oil on the top of the 



THE USES OF PETROLEUM. 205 

ground, there must be a great deal below, so he drilled 
down into the earth for it. At sixty-nine feet he struck 
oil, and the greasy fluid flowed forth at the rate of thirty- 
five barrels a day. When this was reported to other parts 
of the country, it was laughed at; but later on other wells 
were sunk. It was soon found that the real source of the 
oil was much deeper than sixty-nine feet, the best wells 
being those which went down from thirteen hundred to 
two thousand feet and more into the ground. 

It is very difficult to bore such deep holes through the 
rocks. Derricks have to be erected to hold the long steel 
drilling tools, which are so heavy that it would take two 
horses to haul a set of them. Steam engines are placed 
beside the derricks, and the engines keep raising and 
dropping the heavy drills upon the rock until a hole is 
forced down into the earth a quarter of a mile or more. 

When the oil is struck, a big torpedo of nitroglycerin is 
put down into the well and exploded, and the oil sometimes 
gushes forth at the rate of hundreds and even thousands 
of barrels a day. From some wells the oil has to be 
pumped ; from others it flows freely for a long time with- 
out pumping. 

At first petroleum was thought to be of but very little 
value. Indeed, it is said that some wells were sunk sim- 
ply for the novelty of seeing the oil spout up into the air. 
Tens of thousands of barrels of the crude oil were allowed 
to flow into the creeks and rivers, for no one had yet 
learned how to utilize it. It was not long, however, until 
some one discovered a method of refining it and thus re- 
moving its impurities. Then it was discovered that by the 
use of chimneys, properly made, the refined oil could be 
burned in lamps, giving no smoke, and making a much 
better light than any other oil then known. 



2o6 



THE OIL REGIONS. 




A Burning Oil Well. 

Little by little, the value of petroleum for other purposes 
became known and appreciated. It is now used for mak- 
ing gasoline and illuminating gas; and a great deal is 
manufactured into benzine and used in the making of 
India rubber and rubber goods. Out of the refuse from 
refining it come vaseline and other things. Indeed, it is 
said that two hundred important products are made from 
crude petroleum. Its principal use, however, is for burn- 
ing in lamps, where it has superseded all other oils. The 
refined oil used for this purpose is called kerosene. 

Within a few years after Captain Drake struck oil, this 
part of Pennsylvania was filled with men from all parts of 
the world who had come here to make their fortunes. 
Cities grew up in different parts of the oil territory, and a 
vast industry was founded to get the oil out of the earth 
and to prepare it for the markets. Since then we have 
produced at times more than fifty million barrels of oil a 



NATURAL GAS. 207 

year, and to-day our petroleum has a wider sale than any 
other thing we ship abroad. 

Our oil is now sent to all parts of the world. It is used 
by the people of every continent. It is carried on camels 
over the deserts of Africa. I have seen it pushed in cans 
on wheelbarrows in the streets of Peking in China, and 
have watched the natives of India burning it in their huts 
on the Himalaya Mountains. Ships are always on the 
ocean carrying it to foreign lands. 

Great tank steamers have been built for carrying the oil 
over the seas ; and a network of iron pipes has been laid, 
so that the oil in the iron tanks which we see in the oil 
regions can be pumped over the mountains and through 
the valleys to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, 
where there are refineries in which it is prepared for use, 
and from where it is sent, through other pipes, to the 
steamers. There are lines of pipe also running from the 
oil regions to Cleveland, Pittsburg, and Chicago, so that 
by the turning of a valve the owner of the oil can let it 
out into a pipe in which it will flow to almost any market 
he wishes. The pipe lines of the United States are in- 
deed so many that if stretched out in one single line they 
would reach entirely round the world. 

In our travels through the oil region we pass through 
towns whose streets at first seem to be filled with torchlight 
processions. A second look shows us that the torches are 
stationary, and that each consists of a round black pipe, 
out of which comes a waving flame of fire. That flame is 
produced by natural gas. It flows forth from the depths 
of the earth. It comes from huge gas reservoirs made by 
nature, hundreds of feet below the surface of the ground. 
Such reservoirs are common in the oil regions, where the 
gas and oil are often found close together. 



208 - THE OIL REGIONS. 

Men drill for gas much as they do for oil. They bore 
holes into the earth by means of derricks and drilling tools, 
going down from one thousand to several thousand feet 
before they get through the hard rock which forms the 
heavy, tight roof to the porous rock in which the gas is 
stored. 

When the gas rock is struck, the gas rushes out with 
great force. It carries water and stone up with it at first, 
and a pipe is driven down into the well to keep water from 
flowing into it. After this the stream of gas comes out of 
the top of the pipe so fast that in a good well it is impos- 
sible to strike the mouth of the pipe with a sledgehammer. 
It falls upon the stream of gas as though upon a rubber 
cushion, and the gas throws it up from the pipe. Hurl 
a baseball club into the stream. It will be carried eighty 
feet or more into the air, and as it descends into the stream 
it will be lifted again and again, until at last, coming out- 
side the current, it will drop to the ground. 

I have taken a hammer and tried to hit the top of the 
two-inch pipe of a small gas well. The gas stream threw 
the hammer upward again and again, and I could not 
pound the iron. The gas coming out of this little pipe 
made a noise which was almost deafening. The stream of 
gas was of a bluish color, and upon my putting my fingers 
close to it, I found it was as cold as ice. 

Some of the richest gas fields of the United States are 
in western Ohio and eastern Indiana. The gas from these 
places is piped to Toledo, Indianapolis, and other towns, 
and is used for manufacturing. 

In my travels in western Ohio, I was once shown the 
wonderful force of the great Karg Well, near Findlay, 
which was then flowing twelve million cubic feet of gas a 
day. A pipe four inches in diameter had been run out 



NATURAL GAS. 



209 



from the well above the banks of a little river. A match 
was held in front of the pipe, and a lever was turned so that 
the gas came slowly out. 
It was lighted, and first 
formed whatseemed like 
a bonfire hanging above 
the water. Then the pipe 
was gradually opened, 
and the flame increased 
until at last the gas 
poured forth with a roar 
greater than that of Ni- 
agara. The flame spread 
out like a great sheet. It 
was from thirty to forty 
feet long. It hung over 
the rapid-running water, 
making it so warm that 
clouds of steam rose up 
and touched the flame. 
The noise shook the 
earth. The heavy iron 

pipe quivered as the gas came forth, and the air was so hot 
near the stream as to be almost unendurable. Still the 
end of the pipe was cold. The rush of the gas was so great 
that it blew the fire five feet away from the mouth of the 
pipe. 

I threw blocks of wood and pieces of stone mto the gas, 
and saw them carried far out into the river. The sheet of 
flame was steady, and the noise lasted until a valve, which 
moved so gently that a boy could operate it, was turned 
and the gas shut off. 

Gas fields are of great value to the towns near them. 




A Burning Gas Well. 



2IO THE OIL REGIONS. 

All the cooking and warming of the houses is done by gas, 
so that there is no wood or coal to carry in, nor ashes to 
take out. The fires are made by dropping pieces of 
hghted paper into the stoves, and a twist of the finger turns 
the valve that lets in the gas. A turn the other way, and 
your fire is out ; or it will burn all day and all night, if you 
wish it. 

Gas is often burned in grates, the jets coming out of 
sheets of asbestos, which are so roughed up that the flame 
looks like frosted gold as it plays over them. In some grates 
pieces of slag and rock are thrown, and the burning gas 
makes them red-hot, and you have what looks like a fire 
of blazing coals. In fireplaces the people have gas logs 
made of clay, which, when the gas is lighted, remind you 
of a wood fire ; and in the kitchen stoves sticks of artificial 
wood take the place of the real article. 

Natural gas has an enormous heating power, and we 
shall see it largely used in the furnaces of Pittsburg, where 
it furnishes the heat for the making of glass and for some 
of the processes of iron manufacture. 

We find factories in this region in which the gas is used 
as fuel, and the factories and foundries increase as our 
train carries us on down the valley of the Allegheny River. 
At last there seem to be machine shops everywhere. 
Surrounding almost every town, and scattered through it, 
there is a forest of smokestacks, from which, as the even- 
ing shades come on, flames rise upward, lighting up the 
country for miles around, and making a scene which is 
weird, ghostlike, and almost terrible. 

We are now nearing one of the greatest manufacturing 
cities of the United States. We are in the suburbs of the 
smoky city of Pittsburg, in which thousands of men are 
busy day and night making iron and iron manufactures. 



DISCOVERY OF COAL. 



21 



XXVIII. TRAVELS IN THE COAL REGIONS. 



HAVE you ever thought what strange things there are 
away down under the ground? 
We saw some of them when we visited the copper and 
iron mines of Lake Superior; we saw others in the natural 
gas and oil fields ; and to-day we are to examine something 
else, which is even more 






C 4 "3 



' 'I ] 



Ifv- 




The Coal Regions. 



wonderful. It is some- 
thing that we use every 
day, and which we could 
not well get along with- 
out. It is coal. 

Have you ever though t 
what a wonderful thing 
coal is? 

Take up a lump of the 
dirty black stuff and look at it. Can you realize that that 
lump was once parts of plants and vegetables? that it was 
growing ages and ages ago, and then became so covered 
over with earth and stone that after a long time it hard- 
ened and turned into coal? Coal, coal oil, and natural gas, 
with respect to one another, might be called cousins. It 
is thought that all were made in much the same way, and 
they are, as you know, of much the same nature. 

Men lived for thousands of years upon the earth before 
they learned that coal was good to burn. All the iron 
used before the days of the middle ages was smelted 
from the ore with charcoal. A fairy tale is told of how a 
Belgian blacksmith discovered that stone coal was good 
for ir-on making. This blacksmith was a very poor man. 
He had to make the charcoal which he used in his forge, 



212 THE COAL REGIONS. 

but he found it took so much time that, hard as he might 
work, he was not able to make enough money to keep his 
family. At last, in despair, he was about to kill himself, 
when a white-bearded old man appeared at his shop, and 
told him to go to the mountains near by and dig out the 
black earth and burn it. He did so, and was able to make 
a horseshoe at one forging. This is the Belgian story of 
the discovery of coal. 

The first coal found in America was near Ottawa, Illinois. 
It was found by Father Hennepin, a French explorer who 
traveled through that part of our country in 1679. 

The first coal mines worked in the United States were 
not far from Richmond, Virginia. This coal region was 
discovered by a boy who was fishing. While he was hunt- 
ing for crabs for bait in a small creek, he stumbled on the 
outcroppings of the James River coal beds. 

Coal is of different kinds. Bituminous or soft coal can 
be broken without trouble, and some kinds of it burn so 
easily that a lump can be Hghted with a match. Anthra- 
cite coal is almost as hard as stone, and is very difficult to 
break. It was a long time after soft coal was used before 
people knew that anthracite coal would burn. Still, an- 
thracite coal now forms a large part of the fuel of the 
United States. There is a little anthracite-coal region in 
northeastern Pennsylvania, about Wilkesbarre and Scran- 
ton, two hundred miles from New York city, and about 
one hundred and twenty miles from Philadelphia, which 
produces every year coal that sells for more than the 
annual product of all the gold mines of the United States. 
It is the richest coal field in the world. More than one 
hundred million tons of hard coal are taken out of it every 
year, and the mining has been going on for seventy-five 
years. 



ANTHRACITE COAL. 



213 



These coal fields are said to have been discovered by 
Nicho Allen, when George Washington was President of 
the United States. Allen was a hunter. One night he 
encamped in this region, building a wood fire upon some 
black stones. After dinner he lay down by the fire and 
went to sleep. He awoke to find himself almost roasted. 
The stones were on fire, and Pennsylvania anthracite coal 
was burning for the first time. 

Shortly after this a company was formed to sell the new 
coal. Some of it was shipped to Philadelphia; but the 
people did not know how to use it, and could not make 
it burn. It was very unpopular, and those who had 
bought it thought they had been cheated. Some of them 
finally got a writ from the city authorities denouncing the 
men who sold anthracite as knaves and scoundrels for 
trying to impose rocks upon the people for coal. 




A Coal Breaker. 



214 THE COAL REGIONS. 

Anthracite coal as it comes out of the mines contains 
great quantities of stone, slate, and dust. It has to be 
broken up and picked over before it can be used. This is 
done in what are known as coal breakers. A coal breaker 
is a building almost as big as one of the grain elevators we 
saw at Duluth. The coal is taken to the top, and by 
machinery the lumps are separated into different sizes. 
They are then run through inclined troughs, or chutes, and 
boys, who are paid about fifty cents a day, pick out the 
slate and other rubbish as the coal goes by. 

The chief coal of the world, however, is bituminous or 
soft coal. This coal is found in many parts of the United 
States ; and it is interesting to know that we have more 
coal than any other country in the world, just as we have 
more and better iron. This is a very valuable thing for 
us as a nation, because manufacturing is chiefly done by 
means of coal and iron, and hence we shall always have 
plenty to do in making things to sell. 

Coal, in fact, exists in three fourths of our states and 
territories, and it is mined in thirty of them. The most 
of the coal of North America is in the section east of the 
Mississippi River, and by far the greater part lies in the 
Appalachian Mountains. From the northern part of Penn- 
sylvania, running down through these mountains clear into 
central Alabama, there is a great bed of bituminous coal 
which is from eighty to ninety miles wide. This coal bed 
is one of the largest and richest known to the world. It 
could supply the world with fuel for hundreds of years. 

Another big coal field is found in Indiana and Illinois. 
The western parts of Kentucky and Missouri have good 
coal fields, and so have the states of Montana, Washing- 
ton, and Wyoming. Colorado and Utah have also rich 
deposits of coal. 



IN A MINE. 215 

Near Pittsburg the coal vein is about six feet thick ; and 
in going along the Ohio River, and looking at the banks, 
you can see the black bed of coal standing out between the 
rocks above and below. 

Vast amounts of coal are shipped from Pittsburg to 
many parts of our country. One railroad company has 
fifty thousand coal cars, and nine hundred locomotives 
w^hich are used for coal- carrying alone; another road has 
seventy thousand cars ; and a million people are kept busy 
in handling coal. We passed immense barges of coal 
which came from Pittsburg as we rode up the Mississippi ; 
we saw coal going up the Great Lakes in boats which 
steamed by us as we came down to Buffalo ; and now we 
find the Ohio River at Pittsburg almost filled with barges 
ready to be floated down to Cincinnati, Louisville, Cairo, 
and New Orleans. 

Let us take a boat from Pittsburg, and ride up the 
Monongahela River. The stream has cut its course deep 
down into the earth ; and we can see great black pits 
showing out upon the green walls of the hillsides. Those 
black spots are the openings of coal mines, and the little 
villages below them, with their smoke-blackened houses 
running along narrow streets up the sides of the hills, are 
the houses of the miners. 

Keep your eyes on the black holes. See the noisy cars 
coming out on the run, drawn by mules. Watch them as 
they are put on the inclined railroads and rush down and 
discharge their coal into the barges below. For half a 
century they have been taking coal out of those hills, and 
there are vast quantities left. 

Let us go into one of the mines. We crawl down 
through tunnel after tunnel, our way being lighted by the 
little lamps used by the miners. The faces of the men are 

CARP. N. AM. — 14 



2l6 



THE COAL REGIONS. 




"There comes a car 



as black as the coal, and they make us think of ghosts as we 
see them through the dim light in the distance. Notice 
how the tunnels are upheld by wood. The water drips 

down upon us as we 
go through, and we 
walk along a little 
railroad track which 
has been made for 
the coal cars. 

Look behind you ! 
Stand as close to 
the wall as you can. 
There comes a car! It is hauled by a mule, which comes 
on a trot, hurrying even faster as he goes by us. We walk 
for miles through one tunnel after another. The tun- 
nels have been cut out of the coal, and there is only slate 
and rock above and below. Now and then we stop in 
rooms or chambers made by taking out the coal. The 
mines make us think of a city, there are so many passage- 
ways, which cross one another like streets. 

We can see how dangerous the work of mining is. The 
walls sometimes fall in and the miners are crushed. Some- 
times the mines are flooded, and the miners, shut off by 
the stopping up of the tunnels, are drowned. 

Another great danger is from what is known as fire 
damp. There are many gases in coal mines, and these are 
sometimes set on fire by the candles or lamps of the 
miners. This causes a great explosion. As quick as a 
stroke of lightning, and with a clap like thunder, a whirl- 
wind of flame goes through the tunnels, pulhng down the 
timbers and caving in the walls. The men are blinded, 
scorched, and sometimes burned to cinders, and hundreds 
are often killed at one time. 



IN A MINE. 



217 



Our miners have a dangerous and difficult occupation. 
They are, however, much better off than the miners of 
other countries. Their work is easier and their wages 
higher. In England the coal veins are so thin that much 
of the digging out of the coal has to be done by men lying 
on their sides; and in Belgium the coal cars are often 
pulled by men and women. Children are rarely employed 
in the American mines ; but less than a generation ago 
little boys and girls were used to haul coal cars in the 
mines of England and Scotland. They were harnessed to 




Coal Miners at Work. 



the cars by chains fastened to belts about their waists, and 
they crawled along through the low tunnels on all fours, 
dragging the coal to the surface. 

Mining is now going on all through this great Appa- 
lachian coal field. Cities have been built up by means 



2i8 PITTSBURG. 

of the cheap fuel, and a wonderful growth In manu- 
facturing is being made by this means. This is especially 
so at the southern end of the coal beds. Valuable deposits 
of iron are found to lie there very close to the coal, and 
the region about Birmingham, Alabama, promises some 
day to rival Pittsburg as an iron- and steel-making center. 
Nashville and Chattanooga, in Tennessee, are other cities 
which are rapidly growing on account of the abundance of 
cheap iron and coal. 

^^^Oo — 

XXIX. PITTSBURG AND ITS IRON WORKS. 

SOME of the most interesting sights about Pittsburg 
are to be seen after dark. The great iron mills are 
kept running all night long, and out of their huge chim- 
neys flow raging flames, mixed with smoke. If we take 
the inclined railway and go to the top of the hills about 
the city, we shall see such fires in every direction; and in 
traveling at night over some of the railroads coming to 
Pittsburg, we ride long distances by what seem to be 
mounds of blazing fire. These are the coke ovens, in 
which the coal is roasted or baked before it is used for 
smelting iron. 

It seems funny to think of roasting coal, does it not? 

Yes; but the coal must be purified before it is good for 
smelting, and it is this roasting that purifies it. By a 
short ride on the railroad we reach Connellsville, and see 
how the coking is done. Our train takes us by thousands 
of coking ovens. The ovens are moundlike aflfairs of 
brick and stone, built much in the shape of an old-fash- 
ioned beehive, save that they are connected, and that each 



BURNING COKE. 



219 









Coke Ovens. 

oven is almost as large as a gas tank. Each has a lit- 
tle door at the side, and a hole in the top to let out the 
smoke. 

When the ovens are filled with coal, the doors are walled 
up with fire brick. When the oven is first started the coal 
is lighted by means of wood, just as a coal fire is lighted; 
but after a while the oven becomes so hot that the heat 
from the last charge fires the next. After half an hour a 
pale-blue smoke comes out of the top ; a little later on it 
grows darker; and in less than an hour there is a pufT like 
powder, which shows you the coal has been lit. The coal 
is allowed to burn for about seventy-two hours. 

There is an oven burning. Look into it. It is a mass 



220 PITTSBURG. 

of red-hot coals. The heat is intense, but the coal burns 
so slowly that it does not go to ashes, and in seventy-two 
hours the impurities have gone out of it. It will now be 
cooled by pouring cold water in at the top, after which 
it will be dragged out with a great iron rake, and loaded 
up on the cars for the furnaces. 

Let us jump on that car of coke, and go with it to Pitts- 
burg, and learn how iron is made. ^ 

We find that a number of processes must be gone 
through before the iron ore, as we saw it in the mines, can 
be used for machinery. We have already learned that 
there is no such thing as pure iron in nature ; and that 
iron as it is found in the earth is always mixed with rock 
and other minerals. It is by smelting that these are taken 
out and the iron left in the shape that we use it. 

One of the chief places for doing this thing is Pittsburg. 
The blast furnaces in which the smelting is done are about 
as tall as a six-story house. They are immense round iron 
pipes or tubes. Into them is poured, first a layer of iron 
ore, then a layer of coke, and then a layer of limestone. 
Then there are other layers of iron ore, coke, and lime- 
stone, until the great furnace is filled. Limestone, as well 
as coke, is required to produce the change from iron ore 
to iron. 

Now the furnace is ready for the fire. But no ordinary 
fire would melt iron ore. The heat is Increased by means 
of a draught until it becomes so intense that the coke, 
limestone, and ore melt together like sugar under it. 
After a short time the whole is one molten mass, and the 
iron is ready to be drawn out. 

Let us stand at one of the furnaces and see how this is 
done. At the bottom of the furnace there is a hole, which 
is stopped up until the mixture is melted. Now it is 



PIG IRON. 



22 




A Blast Furnace. 



opened. See the golden stream flow forth. It flows out 
like a little river into a ditch or trough of sand. 

The slag or impurities of the iron are on top. They are 
lighter than the iron, and they rise just as wood rises to 
the top of water. When the stream gets about twenty 
feet away from the furnace there is a little dam, which 
makes the top scum flow off to one side, and allows the 
iron to flow out below through a hole under the dam along 
another little canal in the sand. 

The iron is now of a yellow color. It has lost the cop- 
per tinge which it had when it came from the furnace. It 
runs off in golden streams into a bed of sand in which lit- 
tle holes have been molded, so that the bed looks for all 
the world like a garden ready for planting. The holes are 
about the size and shape of what is known as an iron pig, 



222 



PITTSBURG. 




Making Pig Iron. 



which is a piece of metal about as big as a stick of stove 
wood. The yellow stream flows into them, and the garden 
is soon full of these bright yellow pigs, which turn to a 
darker tint as they cool, and then change to the gray of 
cold pig iron. 

Let us go a little nearer the garden. We can see the 
heat waves dancing over the hot iron, and we hold our 
hats before our faces to keep from being scorched. Still 
the furnace men move about, turning the fiery stream this 
way and that, and making it reach every part of the gar- 
den. Some of them are bare to the waist, and beads of 
sweat stand out like pearls on their white skins. They 
drink great quantities of water, and perspire freely, for if 
they did not perspire the heat is so great that they would 
be overcome by it and die. 



DOWN THE OHIO. 223 

When the iron grows cold, the pigs are dragged out of 
the sand and piled up, ready to be shipped to different 
parts of the country, or for use at home for the making of 
steel and all kinds of iron manufactures. 

The slag goes to waste. It is poured out into a big 
iron pot fastened on car wheels. When this pot is filled 
with the fiery, boiling slag, men pull it over a railroad 
track some distance away, and empty it out upon the 
slag heap. 

All iron ore has to be turned into pig iron before it can 
be used for manufacturing. Pittsburg has become a great 
cit}^ largely from its manufacture of pig iron and steel. 
We learn that we are now making more pig iron than any 
other country in the world, and that our steel product is 
largely increasing. 

We spend some days at Pittsburg, visiting the foundries 
and studying the wonderful processes of turning iron into 
steel. We see men making the steel rails for the railroads, 
watch them manufacturing the thick armor plate of steel 
which is to be used to protect the hulls of our war ves- 
sels from the cannon of the enemy, and observe the 
countless other things which are here turned out of iron 
and steel. 

At Pittsburg we are at the head of navigation of the 
Ohio River. Here the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers 
unite, forming the broad Ohio, which flows for nine hun- 
dred and seventy-five miles to the southwest, until its 
waters mix with those of the upper Mississippi and go 
onward to the Gulf of Mexico. This makes a splendid 
waterway through the Ohio Valley, one of the most fertile 
parts of the whole Mississippi system. 

We can get steamers almost any day to go down the 
Ohio. The river is quite as full of shipping as the Mis- 



224 



PITTSBURG. 



sissippi. There are fewer lumber rafts, but a great many 
more boats loaded with coal. The country is much more 
hilly than that through which we traveled on our way up 
from New Orleans. We notice that the farms along the 
banks are much smaller and better cultivated, and that 
there are more cities and towns. 

We sail by town after town, above which rise the smoke- 
stacks of iron, steel, glass, and other factories. At Steu- 
benville and East Liverpool we see men making beautiful 
china and pottery ware, and farther south, at Wheeling 
and Bellaire, we visit factories in which glass bottles and 
nails are made in vast quantities. There are other fac- 
tories of various kinds here and at other points farther 
south, and we learn that almost every city of this middle 




Cincinnati Music Hall. 



FROM CINCINNATI TO CHICAGO. 225 

section north of the Ohio has factories of one kind or 
another. 

We float farther down the river to Cincinnati. Here 
there are so many factories and foundries that the city al- 
most rivals Pittsburg. Cincinnati has about eight thousand 
manufacturing establishments, in which about one hundred 
thousand hands are employed. It has many railroads, and 
its location on the Ohio and at the southern end of the 
Miami Canal, which connects it with Lake Erie, gives it 
fine facilities for transportation by water. 

We visit the beautiful residence section on the hills, some 
distance back from the river, take a walk into Kentucky 
across the suspension bridge which has been here built 
over the Ohio, and then, going back to our boat, sail on 
down the river to Louisville. Here we visit the great to- 
bacco markets and tobacco factories for which the city is 
noted. Louisville is situated at the upper end of the Falls 
of the Ohio, but a canal has been built around the falls so 
that we might continue our boat ride on the Ohio down into 
the Mississippi ; but we decide to go northward instead. 
Three hours by rail lands us in the thriving railroad, com- 
mercial, and manufacturing city of Indianapolis, the capital 
of Indiana. Here we spend a few hours, and then take the 
cars for Chicago. 

XXX. THE GREATEST LAKE PORT IN THE 
WORLD. 

CHICAGO, at the head of Lake Michig:in, is now the 
second city of the United States. It has a popula- 
tion of about two millions, and people who live there think 
it will soon be greater than New York and that it may in 



226 



CHICAGO. 



course of time surpass London. Indeed, Chicago grows 
so fast that if you would know exactly how many people 
it has you would have to take a new census every month. 
It is not an old city. It was founded about 1830, starting 
with a few huts in a swamp. Seven years later it had four 
thousand people, and its inhabitants called it a city. The 
idea of there being a city in such a place seemed ridicu- 
lous indeed to many, and the other cities of the United 
States laughed at the conceit of little Chicago. 

The Chicagoans, however, went bravely on, and in 
twenty years its population had risen to ninety thousand. 
The citizens then began to show the great enterprise and 




Lake Front, Chicago. 



push for which they have always been noted. The ground 
was so swampy that no cellars could be dug on account 



THE GREAT FIRE. 22"] 

of the water. They decided to lift the city up above the 
swamps and give it a solid foundation. So the people 
propped the houses up on stilts ; they brought in ground 
from the surrounding country, and raised the streets at 
least ten feet, elevating, as it were, the whole city. 

Was not that a wonderful feat ? 

Yes ; but this was only the beginning of Chicago's en- 
terprise. The city has gone on doing wonders in the way 
of improvements from that day to this. It is now one of 
the best built and most beautiful cities of our land. Its 
people are still noted for their energy. They are said to 
work faster and do more than the people of any other city 
in the world. Every one is in a hurry, and the bustle 
of Chicago is greater than that of New York. 

Have you ever heard of the great Chicago fire, which 
burned the city to the ground in 1871? Chicago then 
contained three hundred thousand inhabitants. It was, 
like all new cities, made up of fine buildings of stone and 
brick, stores and houses of wood, and rickety shanties, all 
mixed together. Then, one windy night, Mrs. O'Leary, 
an Irishwoman living in one of the suburbs, went out to 
milk her cow. It was dark, and she took a lamp with her. 
The cow kicked over the lamp, and started the blaze which 
burned the greater part of the city to the ground, and de- 
stroyed millions upon millions of dollars' worth of property. 
The kick was a very expensive one, but it was a good thing 
for Chicago, after all. 

The people did not wait until the bricks of the burning 
city were cold before they began to rebuild, and the 
houses which they then erected were put up to stay. 
Even New York has not more substantial buildings than 
the best business blocks of Chicago. They are huge stone 
and brick structures from ten to twenty stories high, and 



228 CHICAGO. 

as far as possible fireproof. The insides of these buildings 
are made of steel. The steel framework is entirely inde- 
pendent of the walls, and the business part of Chicago is, 
in fact, a city of iron buildings incased in walls of stone. 

But how can they build such heavy structures in a 
swamp? The people failed many times before they suc- 
ceeded in getting good foundations. At first great tree 
trunks, or piles, were driven down into the ground, and 
the buildings were constructed upon them, as is done in 
the cities of Holland. But it was found that the big build- 
ings settled unevenly, and the people feared they would 
topple over and fall. 

Then some one solved the problem by making a foun- 
dation of steel and concrete. The surface to be built upon 
was first covered with rails of steel such as are used for 
railroad tracks. These were placed side by side, and in 
the spaces between them a mixture of cement and sand 
called concrete was laid. The concrete hardened almost 
as soon as it was put down. Then another layer of rails 
was placed crosswise on top of the first, and concrete was 
spread upon it. A third layer followed, and so on until 
the builders thought the structure would support the great 
weight of the building which was to rest upon it. 

Chicago is the greatest lake port in the world. Its 
growth is due to its situation at the head of Lake Michigan. 
It is at just the point where goods can most easily be 
shipped to and from all parts of the Mississippi River and 
its tributaries, and where It can distribute the grain and 
other products which come from the West. 

The plains about Chicago are very rich. The vast coal 
fields of the central part of our country are just south of 
it, and it is within easy reach of the Appalachian coal 
mines ; iron can be cheaply brought from Lake Superior 



THE STOCK YARDS. 229 

down through Lake Michigan; and all around and about 
it are the wheat lands and the enormous cornfields of the 
United States. The result is that here has grown up one 
of the greatest commercial and manufacturing cities of the 
world. 

We see the smoke of its factories as we near the city, 
and as we enter it we pass through shady suburban vil- 
lages, out of which rise manufacturing works of all kinds. 
There are enormous steel foundries, there are iron works, 
and there are immense shops in which all kinds of wood- 
working goes on. Chicago is the largest lumber market 
in the world, and it makes all kinds of planed lumber and 
such things as window sashes and doors. It turns out a 
vast amount of furniture, and, indeed, of almost everything 
into which wood can be made. 

At Pullman, one of the suburbs, there is a Httle city 
where people do nothing else but make cars of all kinds, 
from box cars for freight to the elegant sleeping coaches 
in which we have been riding over the country. Chicago 
has mighty elevators and great flouring mills, and it is 
noted for its stock yards, filled with thousands of animals 
that are shipped here to be killed and manufactured into 
meat products for all parts of the world. 

The stock yards are one of the most interesting sights 
in the United States. Chicago is the chief meat-packing 
center of the world. Almost one third of all the meat 
provision business west of the Alleghanies is done here. 
Day and night, and every hour of the day, cars start out 
from Chicago, carrying beef, pork, and mutton to all parts 
of the United States and to Europe ; and the cattle which 
we see this morning will a few days later be on the break- 
fast tables of the people of New York, Washington, and 
other cities and towns. 



230 



CHICAGO. 




The Stock Yards. 



But let us take a look at the stock yards. They are 
located almost in the center of Chicago, although they are 
quite far off from the business part of the city. We can 
go to them on the cable cars for five cents. 

As we approach the yards we hear the lowing of cows, 
the grunting of thousands of hogs, and the bleating of vast 
numbers of sheep. There are usually one hundred and 
sixty thousand animals in these yards, and the animals are 
changed every day. In one year more than ten million 
sheep, hogs, and cattle pass through these pens. 

The stock yards make us think of a city — a city of ani- 
mals within a city of men. Railroad tracks lead to it, 
there are great factories about it, and the houses of the 
city of animals are merely covered and uncovered pens. 



THE STOCK YARDS. 23 I 

The pens are arranged along streets which cross one an- 
other at right angles. There are sections and wards, and 
each section has its own kind of animals. Here is one 
which is devoted to cattle, the pens each holding from 
two to three hundred cows. Many of the pens have no 
roofs, and we can see the cows through the boards. 
There is a ward filled with sheep. There are enough 
little lambs there to supply all the Marys in our town. 
How the white, woolly creatures bleat and baa as we 
go by them! There is the hog ward, containing tens of 
thousands of grunters. 

Look into the pens. Each of them has a long trough 
for water, and another for food. There are twenty-five 
miles of these water troughs in the city, and the feeding 
troughs, if put end to end, would reach fifty miles. The 
water comes from artesian wells which have been sunk 
twelve hundred feet down into the ground, and which 
gather their water supplies from below the bed of Lake 
Michigan. Through the streets of this animal city there 
are railroad tracks for the cars which bring in the animals 
and take them off to be slaughtered. There is a canal at 
one side of the yard, upon which are boats for carrying 
animals from and to the lake. 

But what are those immense buildings in the center of 
this city of animals? That is the Exchange Hall, where 
the rulers of the city live, and where men come to buy 
and sell the four-footed citizens. The officials'are tyrants. 
They are the most bloodthirsty rulers any city ever knew. 
They fill the yards with new animals day after day, only 
to kill them ; and those great buildings which surround the 
yards are the slaughterhouses or meat-packing establish- 
ments, in which the beeves, hogs, and sheep are turned into 
food and other things for the use of man. 

CARP. N. AM. — 15 



232 



CHICAGO. 



Let us visit the packing houses. They are more like 
great factories than the slaughterhouses of our villages. 
We follow the hogs. They go in alive at one end, and 
never stop until they come out at the other in the shape 
of hams, bacon, sausage, lard, buttons, and hairbrushes. 
We find that every part of each animal is saved, and the 




interior of a Packing House. 



butchers tell us that they can sell, in some shape or other, 
every bit of the hog but his squeal It is the same with 
other animals, and scarcely an atom of a cow, sheep, or 
pig goes to waste. 

Even the bones of the animals are sorted, and manufac- 
tured into various articles. The skull bones, the jawbones, 
and the teeth are used by bone burners and bone grinders ; 



BUSINESS AND PLEASURE. 233 

the hip bones, horns, and shoulder bones are turned into 
hairpins, ladies' combs, and buttons; and the bones of 
the thigh are used for the handles of toothbrushes. The 
bones are cooked before they are sold, in order that the 
marrow and juice may be gotten out of them for making 
glue. The hoofs are also used for making glue and grease. 

The blood is sold as a fertilizer. The hides go to the 
tanners, the wool being pulled from the sheepskins, and 
the skins afterwards used for making gloves. The bristles 
of the hog are made into brushes. 

The brains are used for food. Some parts of the beef 
are made into medicines, beef extracts, and beef tonics. 
Other parts are canned and turned into soups, and out of 
the refuse come candles, soap, and a variety of other things. 

We might spend weeks in Chicago and not see all its 
wonders. We get some idea of the riches of the city by 
visiting the vast business houses along Clark, La Salle, 
and Dearborn streets, crossing the busy thoroughfares 
which were named after Presidents Washington, Madison, 
Jefiferson, and Adams. As we go on, we do not wonder 
that Chicago people are proud of their city ; and in con- 
nection with this, our guide tells us how even the chil- 
dren boast of the town, and how one Chicago bo}^, not 
long ago, walking upon these same streets, asked his papa 
how it came that all the Presidents of the United States 
had been named after the streets of Chicago. 

Chicago is a delightful place for children. Lake Michi- 
gan is full of fish which are said to be not only willing, but 
anxious, to be caught. The entire lake front of the city, 
for a distance of about twenty miles, is protected by a line 
of breakwater, over which, in the fishing season, thousands 
of boys and sometimes women and girls may be seen with 
rods and lines trying to catch fish. 



234 



CHICAGO. 



Then there are boat rides on the lakes, and there is 
bicyding on the boulevards, which are as smooth as a 




On the Boulevard, Chicago. 

floor. Chicago has a wonderful system of parks, in one 
of which an electrical fountain plays for three evenings 
every week. It has many public libraries, and one of the 
biggest purchases of books ever known was made by the 
Chicago University, when three hundred thousand volumes 
were bought at one time. 

We have, however, but a short time to spend in this 
wonderful city, and so, after a visit to the Field Museum 
and a few other institutions, we take the cars for our long 
journey across the plains and over the Rocky Mountains. 



THE WONDERLAND OF AMERICA. 235 



XXXI. THE WONDERS AND TREASURES OF 
THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 



T 



HE Rocky Mountains form what might be called the 
roof of the North American continent. As we travel 
westward from Chicago, we soon reach the Mississippi River 
in the midst of the wheat and corn regions, and then for 
one thousand miles we rise steadily upward, as we cross 
the great plains, before we come to the foot of the Rocky 
Mountains at Denver. Denver, although at the foot of 
the mountains, is higher than the top of Mount Washing- 
ton. The summit of Pikes Peak, which we see as we near 
the end of our railroad ride, is almost two miles higher 
than Denver, and nearly three miles above the level of 
Washington, New York, or New Orleans. 

Pikes Peak is one of the highest of the Rocky Moun- 
tains. It was named after Major Zebulon Pike, who tried 
to climb it more than ninety years ago, but was obhged 
to turn back, sadly remarking that nothing but a bird 
could reach its snowy summit. 

But we shall reach the top of Pikes Peak, and we shall 
ride there at our ease in the cars. A railroad has been 
built up this mighty mountain. The road is much like 
that over which we traveled to the top of Mount Wash- 
ington. The Httle steam engine pushes us up, up, up, 
un'til we at last step out of the car at a distance of almost 
three miles above the sea. Pikes Peak is 14, H? ^eet 
high, and it is covered with perpetual snow. 

As we stand upon it, we see the wonderful panorama 
of the mountains and valleys. Stretching to the eastward 
are the great plains, dotted with villages and cities, through 
which we have just passed. They are merely specks on 



2 36 



THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 




The Garden of the Gods. 



the landscape. The Garden of the Gods at our feet, which 
is really a valley filled with vast rock formations, looks 
like a flower bed. To the west, as far as we can see, rise 
hill upon hill and mountain upon mountain, and these in 
most places look like piles of rocks of gigantic size, thrown 
together in all sorts of shapes. 

As we stand here, the clouds float about below us. 
Now they sweep upward, and for a time we are enveloped 
in mist. Now there is a thunderstorm far down the 
mountain side. The lightning seems to flash against the 
rocks, and we can hear the deep roll of the thunder as 
the clouds burst in the mountains. 

The region of the Rockies is the w^onderland of America. 
There is no other place in the world where one can see 
so many marvelous things. We shall there find waterfalls 
higher than Niagara, deserts almost as dry and dreary as 
the Sahara in Africa, great forests of trees which have been 



THE WONDERLAND OF AMERICA. 



2.37 



turned Into stone, and other forests whose trees are so big 
that you could cut out a very large schoolroom inside of 
one of their trunks, and have room to spare. 

In the northern part of this great mountain region, in 
Alaska, there are glaciers far more wonderful than those 
of the Alps ; and in the southern part are the mighty 
volcanoes of Mexico, which vomit forth lava, sulphur, 
and red-hot stones. 

Within a radius of five hundred miles of Pikes Peak lie 
three of the greatest of the natural wonders of the Rocky 
Mountains. If we travel to the northwest, we shall find 




Scene in Yellowstone Park. 



ourselves amid the hot springs and geysers of the Yellow- 
stone Park ; almost directly west, and at about the same 
distance, is found the Dead Sea of America, the Great 
Salt Lake of Utah ; and farther south is the Grand Canyon 
of the Colorado, the most wonderful river bed known to 
man. 



238 



THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 



The Colorado River comes from the snow regions of the 
mountain peaks. It burrows its way, as it were, down 
through the high plains, cutting out a trough, or gorge, 

which is in one 
place more than 
a mile deep, until 
it at last flows 
into the Gulf of 
California. 

The Colorado 
River is in places a 
mad, raging tor- 
rent. It has numer- 
ous falls and many 
rapids, and the 
scenery about it is 
wonderful beyond 
description. The 
great walls of rock 
upon each side of 
it are colored in the 
highest tints of red, 
yellow, gray, and 
chocolate ; and they rise in such shapes that as you float 
down its boiling current you seem to be passing by great 
cities, dashing under mighty forts, and flying by immense 
cathedrals. The cliffs above you are a mile high. At 
times the clouds gather over the top of the gorge, and you 
float along in darkness. Then the clouds break, and the 
clear blue sky shows through. 

The region through which the Colorado goes is almost 
a barren desert. There is nothing but rocks and sage- 
brush. There is no vegetation. This is the character of 




The Grand Canyon. 



TREASURE VAULTS OF THE ROCKIES. 239 

a great part of the Rocky Mountain Region. We find 
rocks of all kinds piled together in cliffs thousands of feet 
high, or cut down into canyons thousands of feet deep. 
There are hills of rock, mountains of rock, valleys which 
are rocky deserts, and rocky plateaus upon which we 
might travel for days and weeks without finding water. 

This is all very wonderful, is it not? 

Yes ; but after a while, when we visit the Yellowstone 
Park, we shall find something much more wonderful. 

We shall see strange things almost everywhere above 
ground in this curious region, and by going down into 
the earth may visit gold and silver mines such as can be 
found nowhere else in the world. You may have read in 
the " Arabian Nights " about the cave of Aladdin, which 
was filled with gold, silver, and precious stones. That 
cave existed only in the mind of the man who wrote the 
story. The treasure vaults we are to visit to-day are real 
treasure vaults. 

From their beginning about the Yukon River in Alaska, 
down through the western part of the North Ameri- 
can continent to the Isthmus of Panama, these wonderful 
mountains contain veins and beds of gold and silver. Not 
far from Pikes Peak, rocks are sometimes dug up which 
are so full of gold that if you roast them the precious 
metal will bubble out and stand up like little golden pin- 
heads upon the dark stone. About Leadville, in Colorado, 
gold is found in one mine in the form of thin sheets and 
plates, squeezed in between the rocks ; and in the Sierra 
Nevada there are vast bodies of white quartz with little 
veins of gold running through them. The gold is some- 
times so mixed with the rock that it has to be ground to 
powder and chemically treated before it can be gotten out, 
and the rock itself is often melted to extract the gold. 



240 THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 

The first gold found in the West was that taken from 
the rivers. The sand of many of the mountain streams 
is mixed with gold dust, or grains and lumps of gold. In 
1848 James Marshall, while digging a race for a saw- 
mill on the banks of the American River in California, 
found some bits of yellow metal which turned out to be 
gold. The news spread, and within nine months from that 
time there were thousands of miners washing the dirt along 
the banks of the California rivers. In less than a year 
more than five million dollars' worth of gold had been dug 
up ; and within four years more than two hundred million 
dollars' worth had been washed out of the streams of the 
Sierra Nevada. Men from all parts of the world rushed 
to California. 

Then gold was found in the mountains farther to the 
eastward ; and it is now known that there are gold and sil- 
ver in every one of the states and territories of this region. 
Since that time more than two billion dollars' worth of 
gold, and more than one billion dollars' worth of silver, 
have been dug out of the Rockies. Hundreds of towns 
have sprung up to accommodate the miners, and the great 
cities of Denver and San Francisco were largely built by 
such means. 

After a short time the miners were not satisfied with 
washing out the gold in pans and in little troughs, or 
cradles. They soon got steam engines and used pumping 
machinery, sending great streams of water through hose 
against the sides of the mountains to wash down the gold- 
bearing gravels. This Is called hydraulic mining. They 
built flumes, or troughs, into which they turned the moun- 
tain streams. On the bottoms of the trous^hs, sticks were 
nailed, and quicksilver placed there. Then the precious 
dirt was thrown in. The water washed away the mud. but 



A VISIT TO A GOLD MINE. 



241 




Hydraulic Mining. 

allowed the grains and dust of gold to fall to the bottom, 
to be swallowed up by the quicksilver, which dissolves 
pure gold and gathers it into itself as water does sugar. 

But all this loose gold comes from the wearing away of 
the rocks in which the gold is ; and the miners soon began 
to hunt for the rocks themselves, to drag them out of the 
mountains, and to crush them to get the gold out. It is 
from such mining that the most of our gold now comes. 



3^^C 



XXXII. A VISIT TO A GOLD MINE. 



TO-DAY we shall first go down into one of the great 
gold mines of Colorado, and see something of the 
enormous work it takes to get this precious ore out of the 
earth. Then we shall follow the ore to the mill, and see 
how the gold is taken out of the rock with which it is mixed. 



242 THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 

Our mine is situated high up in the mountains, more 
than two miles above the sea, and not far from Pikes Peak. 
As we ride up to it on our donkeys, we wonder how the 
miners could tell there was any gold there, and we pass 
on the way hundreds of holes which have been dug by 
men who have failed to find gold. Gold, as you know, 
does not exist everywhere, and it is only when veins of rich 
gold-bearing rock are discovered that it pays to sink mines. 

At last we come to the mine. The buildings above it 
look more like a big factory than anything else. There is 
an immense steam engine, and hoisting machinery to lift 
the cars of ore up out of the ground. The great building 
is known as the shaft house, and the hole which goes down 
into the mine is called the shaft. The shaft of this mine 
is about eight feet square, and almost as deep as the 
height of the Washington Monument. Elevators are al- 
ways moving up and down it, bringing out the rock which 
contains the gold. We can jump on the elevator and go 
down into the mine. The shaft is sunk just at the side of 
the vein of gold-bearing rock, and from it tunnels are dug 
off here and there to get out the ore. 

Each tunnel has a little railroad in it, and the golden 
rock is loaded into iron cars each about the size of a dry- 
goods box. Each car will hold about a ton of ore, and 
when it is filled it is pushed upon the elevator, and a signal 
to the engineer brings it to the top. 

A car is being taken off as we reach the shaft house, and 
the manager of the mine directs us to step on the elevator. 
He signals to the engineer, and we start downward into 
the mine. Within a few seconds we are far below the 
surface. The shaft is filled with a darkness so dense we 
can almost feel it. We huddle close together, and drop 
sixty-five feet before we come to the first level. 



A VISIT TO A GOLD MINE. 



243 



Here we see a score of dirty miners, each holding a 
candle, the light of which makes him look almost ghostlike 
against the darkness of the tun- 
nel at the back. The miners 
have a carload of ore which they 
want to send to the top. We 
go down to another level sixty- 
five feet below this, where an- 
other great tunnel has been cut 
out in the mountains; and at 
last, at the fifth tunnel, three 
hundred feet below the top of 
the mine, we leave the elevator. 

The miners lend us their can- 
dles, and, as we walk along, the 
manager shows us the vein of 
rock which contains the gold. 
It looks just like slate, and it 
seems to be a sandwich of slate 
between walls of other rock run- 
ning slanting down into the 

earth. How far down it goes no one can tell. The tun- 
nels are pipes of rock cut, as it were, out of the golden 
meat of the sandwich. 

As we go through the tunnel, we see how difficult it is 
to get out the ore. Here a miner works by the light of a 
tallow candle. He has a piece of steel as big around as a 
broomstick in his hand, and about as long. He is pound- 
ing it with a great hammer, moving it round and round, 
making a hole in the rock. Now he lays down his tools. 
He takes up what looks like a big candle, and sticks it 
into the hole. Notice how carefully he handles the can-- 
die. It is well he does so, for that candle is dynamite, and 




Elevator in Mine. 



244 THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 

should it go off now it would blow us all to pieces. He 
is using it to blast down the rock. Now he connects a 
fuse with it, and packs the earth tightly in about it. Now 
he lights the fuse, and the manager tells us to run. We 
do so, and just reach a side tunnel when a terrible explo- 
sion occurs. The very earth seems to shake, and the air 
is blown so that our candles go out, although we are now 
a quarter of a mile away. We hear the rock fall, and, 
going back, find the miners digging it out with picks, and 
throwing it into holes in the bottom of the tunnel. It falls 
through these into the cars in the tunnel below. 

The ore, as it is loaded upon the car, looks for all the 
world like pieces of ordinary rock ; we can see no signs of 
gold about it; and still each ton of rock contains so much 
gold that it is worth from ten dollars to several hundred 
dollars. Some parts of the vein are much richer than 
others, and some ore is so valuable that it is put in sacks 
by itself, a little half-bushel sack being worth as much as 
ten thousand dollars. 

The different kinds of ore need different treatments to 
get the gold out. The very rich ore goes to the smelters, 
where it is put into furnaces, with other materials, and so 
melted that the gold is extracted. Other kinds of ore are 
treated by chemicals and gases in different ways ; and 
much of the rock which is of a low grade — that is, which 
contains only small quantities of gold — is sent to the cy- 
anide mills. Here it goes through a comparatively new 
process, by means of which every bit of gold is extracted. 
This process is a very important one. 

Let us go to the top of the shaft, and ride on one of the 
cars of ore to the cyanide mill. Our car is piled with 
•broken stones of different colors. There is gravel in it. 
Pick up a piece of rock from any part of the carload on 



A VISIT TO A GOLD MINE: 



245 



which we are sitting. You might put it under a micro- 
scope, and you could not see a gHnt of yellow, or anything 
which to your eyes would indicate gold. Still, that rock 
will average half an ounce, or about ten dollars' worth, of 
gold to the ton. In those carloads one atom in every 
forty-eight thousand is gold, but this atom is almost evenly 
mixed throughout the w^hole. The question is to get it 
out. 

The superintendent of the works tells us this as we ride 
on the cars up to the mill. The engine drags our car over 
a trestlework track to the top of the mill, for the rock is 
carried from one level to another by means of gravity. 

We look down at the load as we go up. There are 
specks of stone the size of the head of a pin, and there are 
immense bowlders, weighing hundreds of pounds. All 
this must be 
crushed to pow- 
der before it can 
be worked. 

The car stops 
at the top, and 
the ore is loaded 
into what looks 
like a gigantic 
cofifee mill, the 
top of which is 
as big around as 
a hogshead. As 
the rock falls 
into it, the mill 
seizes the stones 

inits great steel teeth and grinds them to pieces. We imag- 
ine we hear them groan as they are crushed, and we shud- 




Rock Crusher. 



246 THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 

der at the thought of getting into the jaws of the machin- 
ery. This mill grinds the ore to the size of a walnut. 
Another takes it and reduces it to pieces the size of a pea, 
and it is then ready for the drier. 

Every molecule of moisture must be taken out of the 
ore before it can be ground to powder. This is done by 
passing it through enormous steel tubes fifty feet long and 
as big around as a flour barrel. Through these tubes 
flames of gas continually blow, and the heat takes all the 
moisture out of the rock. 

Then an elevator of iron buckets, much like that we saw 
in the flour mill, carries the ore to the top of the works, 
and it is emptied into steel crushers, which grind it to 
powder. The ore which we saw before as cobblestones 
and broken rock has now become a flour. It looks like 
dust, but each grain of it contains a little bit of gold, and 
this costly dust is worth a fortune. The rock was hard 
and rough. The dust is so soft and fine you can rub it to 
and fro in your hands without scratching the skin, and it 
looks much like powdered pumice stone. It has, however, 
no gleam of gold, and were it on the road you would walk 
over it without thinking. 

Now out of each of those grains of dust the gold is to 
be taken. This will be done by giving them a bath in a 
solution of cyanide of potassium and water. Cyanide of 
potassium is a chemical which looks like alum. When 
dissolved in water it has such an attraction for gold that if 
there is any gold in anything which it touches, the gold 
will melt into the fluid and become a part of it, just as 
sugar or salt goes into water. The dust with the gold in 
it is put into circular tanks of steel, each about as high 
as your waist and so large around that you could not 
get one of them into an ordinary schoolroom. Then the 



A VISIT TO A GOLD MINE. 



247 



water containing the cyanide is let in. We can see it 
flowing down out of the pipes into the golden flour. It 
looks just Hke water; but if you should taste it, it would 
kill you, for the cyanide makes it deadly poisonous. As 
the stuff runs through the flour, it makes it look like a 
great pot of brown mush or mud. It would make good 
mud pies ; but it is mud mixed with gold. As the cyanide 
water goes through it, the gold leaves the mud and passes 
into the water, which is then drawn off through the bot- 
tom of the tank. There is some of it now flowing through 
that trough. It does not look as though there was gold in 
it, but there is, and if we follow it into the room below, we 
can see how the gold is gotten out of the water. 

This is done by means of the attraction the gold has for 
zinc. We have seen how fond gold is of cyanide. We 
now find that it likes zinc even better. The golden water 




Prospecting for Gold. 



CARP. N. AM. — 16 



248 THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 

is run into boxes filled with shavings of zinc, much like the 
excelsior we use for packing. As the water touches these 
shavings, the gold leaves it and sticks to the zinc ; and 
when the water again passes out, all of the gold is left. 
The shavings are now washed to get off the gold ; and the 
dirty zinc and gold is so melted in a furnace that when the 
mouth of the furnace is opened, a golden stream pours 
forth, which, being run into a mold, soon hardens into a 
brick of gold more pure than the finest wedding ring. 

We find gold-mining camps almost everywhere as we 
travel through the Rockies ; and away off in the moun- 
tains, hundreds of miles from any cities, we see men going 
from place to place, digging, or prospecting, for gold. 



o-^^c 



XXXIII. A DAY IN A SILVER MINE. 

YESTERDAY we spent in the depths of the earth, sur- 
rounded by gold. To-day we are to visit one of the 
greatest silver mines of our country. The United States 
produces more silver than any other country in the world, 
and there are mining cities in the Rockies which are 
built above beds of silver-bearing rock, and in which pay- 
ing mines might be sunk by digging under the principal 
streets. This is the case with Leadville, Colorado, which 
is in one of the chief silver regions of the country. 

The mine we shall enter to-day is much farther west. 
It is the famous Ontario Mine, situated in the Wasatch 
Mountains, near Park City, Utah, which has already pro- 
duced more than thirty million dollars' worth of silver. 

We ride through the muddy streets of Park City, up the 
narrow gulch behind it, past great works which are crush- 



A DAY IN A SILVER MINE. 



249 




Mining District — Leadville. 



ing the ore to extract the silver, and on up to the big 
barnlike buildings which contain the machinery for getting 
the ore out of the mine. 

Here there is a shaft like that by which we descended 
into the gold mine. The silver, like the gold, is found in 
a great vein, or sandwich, of silver-bearing rock between 
walls of other rock. No one knows how far down into the 
earth this silver vein goes. The shaft which has been sunk 
beside it extends down about one third of a mile, and at 
levels one hundred feet apart tunnels have been dug out 
into the vein to extract the ore. Each of these tunnels is 
from four to six feet wide, and so high that we can walk 
through it without stooping. From the tunnels the miners 
have worked upward along the vein, digging out great 
caves and rooms in the mountain, all of which have to be 
walled and roofed with timbers to keep the earth from 
falline in. 



250 THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 

A good idea of a silver mine might be gotten from a 
big New York apartment house. Take the Ontario, for 
instance. It has fifteen stories, each one hundred feet in 
height. In the shaft there is an elevator which a steam 
engine raises and lowers, carrying the ore and the men 
from story to story. At each story a tunnel runs off 
through the vein and connects with the rooms, or stopes, as 
they are called by the miners. The tunnels are the pas- 
sageways or halls of the flats, and the stopes are rooms dug 
upward and outward in getting out the ore. Each tunnel 
has a little railroad running through it, and there are about 
fifty miles of such tunnels in the Ontario. 

The cars of the railroad are of iron. They are always 
loaded by gravity. From the tunnel of each of these 
stories to the tunnel below it a pipe, or chute, has been 
cut at such an angle that the ore being shoveled into 
it will roll down and fall into the car placed at its mouth 
at the other end, one hundred feet below, thus saving the 
lifting of the heavy ore. 

But the manager is ready to take us down into the mine. 
Two cars, each containing fifteen hundred pounds of silver 
ore, have just been wheeled off of the elevator, and we are 
told to step on. 

As we do so, the manager gives a signal to the en- 
gineer, and we start down into the earth. We descend as 
fast as though we were in the elevator of a Chicago hotel, 
and drop at once into the darkness. We are warned to 
keep close within the cage, as a hand or a head might be 
taken off by a projecting timber. We hold on for dear 
life to the iron rail above us, and try to shrink ourselves 
inward as far as possible as we go down, down, down. 
Now we pass one of the levels, and catch a glimpse of a 
candle in the opening. Now our ears are dinned by the 



A DAY IN A SILVER MINE. 25 1 

shooting of a blast, and the sound so shakes the air that 
our candles are blown out. We Hght them again when 
we fall to the next level, and the faces of the miners about 
us look weird and ghostlike in their flickering glare. 

It makes us shudder, and we feel at times as though we 
were on the edge of the grave. We tremble when the 
elevator is stopped at the sixth level, and there, six hun- 
dred feet below the earth, a miner steps on with a box 
of dynamite candles. It is no bigger than a soap box. 
It cannot be more than two feet square, but it has 
enough dynamite in it to blow up the Capitol at Wash- 
ington. There is no top to the box, and as the miner 
places it close to our feet, we think of the terrible possi- 
bilities. Suppose a rock should drop from the top down 
upon that dynamite! Suppose a spark from a candle or 
a bit of wick should fall into it! We can feel our hair 
rising and our faces whiten. We ask as to the danger, 
and are told that it is comparatively small, but that the 
box contains forty per cent, of nitroglycerin. We feel 
much relieved, however, when it is taken away. 

And so we go on down to the bottom. As we descend 
we hear the rushing of water. Many of our silver mines 
are wet mines. The water has to be kept out of them, 
and vast works are necessary for this end. The Ontario 
is a wet mine, and among its waterworks is the famous 
Ontario Tunnel, which was built, at a cost of five hundred 
thousand dollars, to carry the water out of the mine. This 
tunnel is a subterranean passageway three miles in length, 
so wide that we could drive a buggy through it, and so 
high that we walk in it without stooping. The tunnel 
has a floor running through it. Upon this there is a rail- 
road by which ore and men are carried from one part of 
the mine to another by mules. 



2^2 



THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 



As we walk over the road we hear the rushing of water, 
and look down between the boards. There is a torrent 
flowing under us. It comes from the mine at the rate of 
ten thousand gallons a minute, and as we listen, we hear 
the water falling, falling, as it comes from the levels above. 
There was not an ounce of silver in the rock which was 
dug away to make this tunnel, and it gives us some idea 
of the cost of mining when we learn that this half-million 
dollars was spent for dead work, and solely to get the 
water away from the other parts of the mine. 

It is the water that 
necessitates the wall- 
ing of the tunnels and 
the stopes with logs. 
The wet earth is al- 
ways pressing in, and 
without timbers the 
mine would not last 
for an hour. The 
pressure is so great 
that it sometimes 
grinds the great pine 
logs to powder. Some 
of the highest-priced men employed in the mines are those 
who take care of the timbers, who walk through the mine 
daily, looking for weak spots. The best of timber is re- 
quired, and that used in the Ontario Mine comes from the 
forests of Oregon. 

And so we go along from tunnel to tunnel. Now we 
climb into one of the stopes, and watch the men at work. 
We have candles in our hands, and we crawl along, bend- 
ing almost double, the water dripping down upon us. At 
last we enter a cave. Here a half-dozen miners are work- 




Timbers in a Mine. 



A DAY IN A SILVER MINE. 253 

ing. Some are taking the ore out with picks. Their wire 
candlesticks are stuck into the rocks beside them as they 
dig away at the pile of stone which has been blasted out 
by dynamite. Some are loading ore. They push it into 
the chutes with long-handled shovels, and we hear it roll 
down and strike the iron bottom of the car beneath. 

In other places men are drilling in order to blast. They 
blow down the rock with dynamite just as the miners did 
in the gold mine we visited. There goes a blast now. 
Let us go to the scene of the explosion. The dynamite 
has torn the rock out of the earth, and a great mass of sil- 
ver-bearing ore has been loosened from the sides of the 
mountain. As we stop, the miners show us the vein. It 
runs from six inches to forty feet in width, the average 
beincr fifteen feet, and in it we can see streaks of silver ore, 
some of which are three feet wide. 

But let us follow the ore to the mill. It is put into the 
steel cars, raised to the surface, and carried in wagons to 
the immense frame buildings farther down the mountain. 
First it is run through a crusher, which chews the rocks 
between its teeth until they are ground into pebbles and 
fitted for the drier. The wet ore is dried much as we saw 
the gold rock roasted in the cyanide mill. It is next 
crushed to a flour with heavy steel stamps, and then mixed 
with salt, and roasted again in such a way as to prepare it 
for the quicksilver, which, as we shall see later on, sucks 
the silver out of the ore flour. 

After being roasted, the hot ore flour is left piled up on 
the floor of the furnace room for a time. We see several 
such piles there as we go in. They look like piles of sand, 
and we feel tempted to jump into them, when the man- 
ager pulls us back, and tells one of the men to stir up a 
pile with a shovel. He does so, and we see that only the 



254 



THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 



outside is yellow. Under the thin coating the ore is red- 
hot, and had we jumped into it our legs would have been 
roasted. 

The process by which the quicksilver takes the silver 
out of the ore makes one think of the prince in the fairy 
tale, who broke through the hedge and kissed into life the 
princess who had been sleeping for a hundred years. It 
is the quicksilver prince, in fact, who kisses the sleeping 
silver-ore maiden into life, and carries her away from the 
palace of rock in which she has been locked for ages. 
After the sand has cooled, it is carried into what is known 




Interior of a Silver Mill. 



as the pan room, and is thrown into great pans of iron, 
each of which holds about three thousand pounds. Water 
is introduced, and this turns the ore sand to a thick brown 
mush. 

Now into each of the pans, through a little pipe, are 



A DAY IN A SILVER MINE. 255 

poured three pounds of quicksilver, and stirring machinery 
is set to work, which moves about through the ore, mix- 
ing the quicksilver with it. The sand was warm, and the 
quicksilver by the warmth becomes active, and by the 
mixing divides into drops as big as the point of a pin. The 
mixers move about at the rate of sixty revolutions a min- 
ute, and send these little quicksilver drops through the 
sand. As they go they seek out the particles of silver, 
and as each drop of quicksilver touches an atom of silver it 
sucks it into itself. This traveling of the quicksilver is 
kept up for eight hours, at the end of which time all of 
the silver in the sand has been absorbed by the quick- 
silver. 

The two metals have united, and the marriage is com- 
plete. The quicksilver is now drawn off, and you have a 
bucketful or so of quicksilver containing the silver. But 
man cannot use quicksilver and silver mixed together. 
The quicksilver-and-silver mixture is now put into a fur- 
nace, which is so tightly sealed up that not even vapor can 
get out of it, except by means of a pipe at one end. Then 
the fire below is made hotter and hotter until at last the 
quicksilver, which turns to vapor at two hundred and sixty 
degrees of heat, rises up in the form of vapor. It flows 
off into the pipe, and is condensed farther on by cool water 
passing over the pipe, and is thus saved. 

The pure silver does not vaporize at all. After the 
quicksilver has left it, it is allowed to cool ; and when the 
furnace is opened, it is found on the bottom, looking for 
all the world like a piece of old plank covered with ashes. 
It is now silver slag, or impure silver bullion, and is ready 
to be shipped to the refining furnaces in other parts of the 
country, where, by means of chemicals, it is made pure and 
fitted to go to the mint to become silver dollars. 



256 



THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 



XXXIV. ACROSS THE ROCKIES TO SALT 
LAKE. 

THE trip from Denver to San Francisco requires about 
thirty-six hours of fast railroad travel. We find the 
journey far different from those we took in the eastern 
part of our country. The railroads climb right over the 




Railroad over the Mo. 



Rocky Mountains. We wind about one curve after an- 
other, through great gorges where the cliffs seem about to 
fall down upon us, climbing always upward, until at one 
place we reach a pass where we are two miles above the 
sea. Now everything is dry and rocky and thirsty-look- 
ing. The air is so clear that we can see for miles, and so 
pure that we drink in deep breaths of it. In climbing the 
mountains, we find that we have to stop every few mo- 
ments to breathe. Some of us feel faint and sick from the 



CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS. 



257 



rarity of the air. We learn that some people are always 
attacked by the mountain sickness at this altitude. I have 
seen people faint away in going over Marshall Pass, on the 
Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. 

We ride for miles without being out of sight of snow. 
Snow lies on the tops of the mountains all the year round. 
In the winter it falls in such quantities that the drifts cover 
the railroad tracks ; hence miles of snowsheds have been 
built over the tracks around the sides of the mountains, in 
order to keep the snow from stopping the cars. Going 
through these sheds is much like going through a big tun- 
nel, except that, here and there, we pass a crack through 
which we can peep out and look down perhaps thousands 
of feet into the valleys below. 

The scenery is wonderfully grand ; but as we look at the 
country about us, from the rocky desert to the snow-clad 




Mountains in Utah. 



258 



THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 



mountains, we wonder if this part of the United States can 
really be of much value. We remember, however, the 
mines of gold and silver, and are told that vast deposits of 
copper, lead, and other minerals are found here. We learn 
that where there is water large herds of cattle can be pas- 
tured upon the high plains, and that thousands of such 
beasts are turned out to graze, under the charge of herds- 
men, who are sometimes called cowboys. 

Vast flocks of sheep are pastured among the mountains. 
These flocks are watched by shepherds who live, with 
their sheep dogs, in covered wagons from one year's end 
to the other, while driving the sheep from place to place 
to find the best feeding grounds. As we see these wagons 
standing out on the plains, with nothing but the rocks, 
grass, and sky about them, it seems to us that such a life 
must be very lonesome. We ask if it is so, and are told that 
the shepherds sometimes go crazy for the want of company. 

Now and then we pass 
prairie-dog villages — lit- 
tle hillocks, each of which 
has a hole leading into it 
to the nest where the 
prairie dogs live with their 
young. The prairie dogs 
are about the size of small 
rabbits. Some of them 
sit on their hind legs, on 
the tops of their little 
houses, and watch the 
cars as they go by, while 
others are frightened and scamper into their holes. We 
look m vain for the grizzly bear, deer, and mountain sheep. 
Such animals are seldom seen near the railroads, although 




Prairie Dogs. 



SALT LAKE CITY. 



259 



a few hours' walk from almost any of the stations will bring 
you to places where they can be found. 

The country seems to grow more dusty and dreary as 
we travel farther westward, when all at once we come out 
of the desert into the green valley of the Great Salt Lake, 
and find ourselves in Salt Lake City, the capital of Utah. 

There are few more beautiful towns than Salt Lake 
City. It lies in a valley, surrounded by mountains which, 
at the back of the town, rise more than a mile upward, 
their heads crowned with everlasting snow. A few miles 
away to the northwest lies the Great Salt Lake ; and north- 
ward and southward, as far as we can see, is a green valley 
covered with meadows, orchards, vineyards, and gardens. 




Salt Lake City. 



26o THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 

Salt Lake City has very wide streets, shaded by great 
forest trees. Its houses have lawns, gardens, and orchards 
about them ; and along the sides of each street a stream of 
mountain water flows. There are few poor buildings, and 
the city seems to us a prosperous place. 

Salt Lake City was built by the Mormons, who, with 
their prophet Brigham Young as leader, long before the 
days of railroads, traveled over the plains and mountains, 
and picked out this spot for their city. The Mormons 
were a body of men who thought they had received a new 
revelation from God which they were to obey. Among 
other things, they believed that it was right for a man to 
have more than one wife; but as this is against the laws 
of the United States, they do not now practice this belief. 

The Mormons laid out their city, dividing it into squares 
of ten acres each, and began to build the great structures 
of the Mormon Church which are now among the wonder- 
ful buildings of the world. The Mormon Temple, recently 
finished, is one of the grandest churches in this country. 
It is built of snow-white granite from the mountains near 
by. It covers more than an acre, and is one hundred feet 
high, with great towers, which rise up more than one hun- 
dred and twenty feet higher than the main building. The 
temple was almost forty years in building, and it has cost 
half as much as the Capitol at Washington. It Is where 
the Mormons meet for some special observances of their 
religion, and outsiders cannot enter it. 

Not far from the temple, we see the great building in 
which the Mormons worship every Sunday. It looks like 
an enormous bath tub, or the half of an eggshell set upon 
pillars. It is made entirely of iron, glass, and stone, with 
a roof of stamped copper. It Is known as the tabernacle, 
and is open to all. The tabernacle has seats for nine 



SALT LAKE CITY. 



261 




Mormon Temple and Tabernacle. 



thousand people. Upon ordinary Sundays more than six 
thousand men, women, and children go to church there, 
and at many times the seats are all filled. The Mormons, 
who were very few at first, grew in numbers from year to 
year, and it is now estimated that there are more than two 
hundred thousand of them in Utah. 

At the time the Mormons came here the Salt Lake Val- 
ley was almost all desert. They turned the streams of 
water out over the land, irrigating it, and thus transforming 
it into prosperous farms. As we travel through these 
regions, we shall learn that much of the desert will make 
the best farming land if it can only have water. 

In many parts of our country there is so much water 



262 



THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION. 



that we do not stop to think what it is worth. In the far 
West men buy and sell water. There are thousands of 
farmers in Colorado, Utah, California, and other states 
who are glad to pay for the water which comes from the 
streams. There are irrigation companies, which spend 




An Irrigation Canal. 



vast sums to save the water and to carry it to the right 
points on the land. The water is sometimes dammed up 
in the mountains, being stored there in lakes, and only so 
much is allowed to go out at a time. Canals are built from 
the rivers out into the desert, and smaller canals lead off 
from these, covering the thirsty land with a network of 
little waterways within which all things will grow even 
more luxuriantly than in the countries where there is 



GREAT SALT LAKE. 263 

more rain. Such watering of land is called irrigation. We 
shall see much of it in all the states of this region. 

From Salt Lake City we can ride in less than an hour 
to the Great Salt Lake. This lake lies in the vast basin 
between the Wasatch Range and the Sierra Nevada. The 
basin has no outlet to either ocean, but part of its water 
flows into the Great Salt Lake. 

This wonderful body of water is one hundred miles long, 
and its average width is from twenty-five to thirty miles. 
It lies right at the foot of the Wasatch Range, and is so 
bounded by mountains that streams of fresh water are al- 
ways flowing into it ; but, notwithstanding this, it is six 
times as salty as the waters of the ocean. It furnishes the 
most delightful salt-water bathing in the world, although 
it is more than a thousand miles away from either ocean. 
Any one can swim in it ; for the salt makes the water so 
heavy that, if you were to tread your way out from the 
shore to where the water is fifty feet deep, you could not 
possibly sink, and your body, from the shoulders upward, 
would stick out of it like a cork on a fishing line. 

The waters of the Great Salt Lake are so salty that 
thousands of tons of salt are made by evaporation along 
the shores of the lake ; and there is so much soda in the 
water that, at one place near Salt Lake, a windy night 
never fails to pile up many tons of soda, washed there by 
the waves. 

The Great Salt Lake contains so much salt that no fish 
and few other li\ang things can exist in it. As we lie with 
our arms folded, floating upon it, we need not be afraid of a 
shark nipping off our legs; and as we tread through it, 
neither fish nor crabs will bite at our toes. We might fish 
here for years and never get a bite. Still, some of the 
streams that flow into the lake are full of delicious brook 

CARP. N. AM. — 17 



264 



CALIFORNIA. 




Bathing in Great Salt Lake. 

trout, and were we to follow the little river Jordan from 
its mouth in this lake up to its source at Utah Lake, we 
should find there one of the prettiest fresh-water lakes in 
America. 



XXXV. THE FAIRYLAND OF CALIFORNIA. 



LEAVING Salt Lake, we continue our ride over the 
^ dusty plains and great mountains. We cross the 
state of Nevada, noted chiefly for its silver and gold mines, 
into California, and then, shooting down the timbered 
sides of the Sierra Nevada, find ourselves at the city of 
Sacramento, in one of a series of valleys which make up 
a great part of the fairyland of California. 

After our long and dusty ride over the rocky, thirsty 



A DELIGHTFUL CLIMATE. 



265 



highlands, California is wonderfully refreshing. There is 
no section of the United States for which nature has done 
so much. There are parts of California in which it is sum- 
mer all the year round. The flowers always bloom, and 
the trees are always green. In the city of Los Angeles 
they sometimes have a festival of roses to celebrate the New 
Year, and on Christmas morning you could there go out 
to the shore and take a bath in the ocean, come back and 
set the table for your Christmas dinner under the orange 
trees, and in the afternoon, by a short railroad ride, be up 
among the snows, under some of the finest Christmas trees 
in the world, on the tops of the mountains. 

Our trip through California makes us think of Christ- 
mas, for we see again and again many of the very things 
we then find in our stockings. We travel through regions 
in which delicious English walnuts hang from the trees, and 




Almond Trees in Bloom. 



266 



CALIFORNIA. 




A Rose Bush in California, 



we see orchards loaded with almonds. There are oranges 
bigger and sweeter than those we ate in Florida. There 

are lemon trees by the 
thousands, and we ride 
for miles through vine- 
yards of the choicest 
grapes. When we eat 
our mince pie or plum 
pudding at our next 
Christmas dinner, we 
may have some of the 
very raisins which we 
now see as grapes on 
the vines. We are sur- 
prised to learn that 
many of the raisin grapes are green in color. They are 
of the variety known as the white muscat, and they turn 
purple only w^hen, having been cured in the sun, they be- 
come dried raisins. 
Do 3^ou like prunes? 

California has thousands of trees on which they grow. 
Prunes are a species of plum, and they are far more deli- 
cious as they hang on the trees than when dried and packed 
away in boxes for sale. 

We see olive groves here and there. Olive trees are 
knotty and gnarly. The fruit on them looks like green 
plums, and we make wry faces as we bite into it. Olives 
must be pickled before they are ready for eating. The 
fruit is gathered very carefully. Women and men, and 
sometimes boys and girls, do the picking. Some stretch 
out sheets under the trees, while others climb up the 
trunks and shake the branches so that the olives fall down 
into the sheets. After being picked, the olives are sorted. 



OLIVES AND FIGS. 



267 



Those which are larg-e and sound are kept for pickhng, 
while the bruised ones are crushed and pressed to squeeze 
out the oil which we use on our tables for salads. 

Olive trees are planted in orchards, in rocky and sandy 
places. The trees are first sprouted from cuttings in hot- 
houses, then transplanted, and in seven or eight years 
they begin to bear fruit. At ten years a good tree should 
produce five gallons of olives a year; and when fully 
grown it sometimes produces ten times as much. 




Olive-Oil Works. 



Have you ever tasted fresh figs? As they hang upon 
the trees they are twice as large as when dried and pressed 
into boxes. • They are as sweet as honey, and very deli- 
cious when eaten with cream. Fig trees grow in many 
parts of California, and we are shown single trees which 
have yielded a thousand pounds a year. 



268 



CALIFORNIA. 



English walnuts are planted in orchards. The trees 
begin to bear at the end of six years, and some trees yield 
from eight to ten dollars' worth of nuts every year. 
When the nuts are ripe, they are shaken or knocked from 
the tree, and packed for shipping. 

The first men who came to California were miners; but 
after a time it was found that the land would grow wheat 
and other grains, and that it would produce more and bet- 
ter fruits of some kinds than any other part of our coun- 
try. It was found that the driest of the lands would raise 
good crops if they could only have water. So large irri- 
gation works were established, and by them California has 
been turned into one of the most wonderful grain farms 
and fruit gardens in the world. There are thousands of 
small farms, of ten acres or less, upon which people make 
a living. The land produces so much that twenty acres is 




A Vineyard in Californis 



BIG FARMS. 269 

quite enough for one man, and a person who has an orange 
grove of forty acres is well to do. 

You must not think, however, that all the farms of Cali- 
fornia are small. There are some in the state which are 
very large. The Vina Ranch, which was given by Sena- 
tor Leland Stanford to the Leland Stanford Junior Uni- 
versity, contains fifty-nine thousand acres. It is bigger 
than five hundred of the ordinary eastern farms of one 
hundred acres each ; and you will get an idea of its extent 
when I tell you that its irrigating canals are one hundred 
miles longer than the distance between New York and 
Washington. 

This farm is north of San Francisco. When I visited it, 
there were thirty thousand sheep nibbling upon it, and 
about them were playing seven thousand little lambs which 
had been born that year. In another place I saw a drove 
of thousands of hogs, and there were many hundreds of 
valuable horses. It takes a large number of people to 
manage a farm of this kind. There were fifteen hundred 
men working upon it, and I rode from camp to camp, in 
different parts of the farm, to see how they lived. They 
slept in sheds, or barracks, many men in one large room. 
The men of each camp ate together. Their meals were 
cooked by Chinese cooks; and after the day's work was 
over they played baseball and other games, and amused 
themselves by dancing with one another. 

Such a farm is managed like a large business establish- 
ment. An account of everything is kept, every man 
knows just what he has to do, and the work is divided up 
into departments. 

An interesting part of this farm is the vineyard, which, 
I was told, is the largest in the world. It produces enough 
grapes each year to give a half-pound, to every man, 



270 



CALIFORNIA. 




Gathering Grapes. 



woman, and child in" the United States. If you could 
imagine a whole county covered with grapevines, you 
might get some idea of it. 

The vineyard is divided up into blocks, just Hke a city, 
being cut up by streets and cross streets. The grapes are 
ripe about the ist of August, when it requires one thou- 
sand men and boys to pick them. Two pickers work to- 
gether, each carrying a box, and sorting the grapes as they 
go from vine to vine, putting the poor grapes into one box 
and the good ones into another. 

Is not this a wonderful state? Almost anything will 
grow better in California than in the eastern part of our 



THE BIG TREES. 



271 



country. Beets are raised, in some parts of the state, 
which will weigh as much as a good-sized boy ; and 
pumpkins have been grown which have weighed two hun- 
dred and seventy-five pounds, or as much as a full-grown 
pig. There are elderberry bushes in the southern part of 
California which have trunks from one to two feet in 
thickness ; and there is one rose bush at Pasadena w^hich 
is said to have one hundred thousand blossoms at one time. 

The biggest trees in the world are to be found on the 
western slopes of the Sierra Nevada. Within a hundred 
and thirty miles of San Francisco, in Calaveras county, 
California, there are groves of trees some of which are so 
big that you could build a 
very large schoolroom inside 
of them. Some of these trees 
are two thirds as high as the 
Washington Monument, and 
the top of one of them seems 
almost to pierce the clouds, for 
it is four hundred feet above 
the ground. 

Many of our houses are not 
more than thirty feet in width. 
There is one of these trees 
which is forty-one feet in 
thickness, and if it could be 
hollowed out, you could make 
a large house inside its bark. 
Through the trunk of another 
tree a hole has been cut. This 

hole is so wide that w^e can easily drive through it in a 
carriage, and as we look at the bark, we see that it is almost 
a yard thick. 




A Big Tree. 



2/2 



CALIFORNIA. 



The big trees are evergreens, related to the cedars. They 
have pine needles much like those of the cedars found in 
other parts of the country, and the cones which grow upon 
them are not much thicker than those which grow upon 
some other pine trees. They do not usually grow by 
themselves, but among other trees, and they tower like 
giants over the smaller pines below. They seem to in- 
crease in size as we come nearer, and at last, when we 
stand under them and look upward, their tops seem almost 
to touch the sky. It is hard to realize that they were once 
only little sprouts pushing their way up through the ground. 




Yosemite Valley. 



That must have been a long time ago, must it not? 
Yes, indeed. Some of them are said to be as much as 
twelve hundred years old. They were eight hundred 




The Sentinel, Yosemite Valley, California. 



THE YOSEMITE VALLEY. 



273 



years old when Columbus discovered America; and they 
were quite big trees many, many years before that time. 

These trees are very valuable for their lumber. The 
wood is light, soft, and coarse-grained ; but it takes a high 
polish, and there is so much lumber in a single tree that 
some have sold for thousands of dollars. Congress has, 
however, now taken some of the groves into one of the 
government reservations, and has decided that they shall 
be kept for all time as one of the wonders of our country. 

Another great wonder of California is the Yosemite 
National Park, which lies in almost the center of the state. 
This park contains the Yosemite Valley, which is an ir- 
regular trough sunken almost a mile below the region 
about it. The scenery of the valley is grand, and among 
its most marvelous fea- 
tures are the Yosemite 
Falls. 

At Niagara Falls we 
saw how the Niagara 
Rivermadeits immense 
drop of one hundred 
and sixty feet. In the 
falls of the Yosemite 
the Merced River leaps 
half a mile over the 
rocks down into the 
valley. It first takes 
a jump of more than 
a quarter of a mile 
straight down from the 
top of a cliff, then falls 
a distance of six hundred feet in a succession of beautiful 
cascades, and then drops to the bottom of the valley. 




Mirror Lake, Yosemite Valley. 



274 CALIFORNIA. 

One of the falls of the Yosemite is known as the Bridal 
Veil. The water in this drops down a distance almost one 
hundred feet greater than the height of the Washington 
Monument. As it falls it is swayed by the wind and 
turned to a spray, making it look like a fleecy white veil, 
which, when the sun strikes it, becomes a sheet of rainbows. 



D>94c 



XXXVI. SAN FRANCISCO AND THE CHINESE. 

THE large cities of the Pacific slope are to be found at 
the western ends of the railroads crossing the continent. 
Most of them have harbors on the coast, so that goods can 
be easily shipped to and from them by sea as w^ell as by 
land. 

At the south is Los Angeles, at the end of the Southern 
Pacific Railroad, which starts at New Orleans, and passes 
through Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, on 
its way to California. Los Angeles is so beautiful, and 
is surrounded by such a beautiful country, that it is 
well named the "City of the Angels." It is a thriving 
place, with wide streets lined with shade trees, and many 
gardens filled with beautiful flowers. Under the city large 
deposits of petroleum have been discovered, and there are 
so many derricks that we think of the cities of the Penn- 
sylvania oil regions until we look at the orange trees, the 
hedges of calla hlies, and the geranium bushes, which here 
sometimes grow to a height of ten feet. There are banana 
and lemon trees about Los Angeles, and all kinds of tropi- 
cal fruits are sold in its markets. 

A day's ride by train farther north is San Francisco, at 
the end of the Central Pacific Railroad, by which we 



SAN FRANCISCO. 



275 



crossed Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, on our way to Cali- 
fornia. San Francisco has been called the " Child of the 




San Francisco. 



Mines." When gold was discovered, it consisted of a few 
shanties built upon sand hills near the shores of the beau- 
tiful San Francisco Bay. Now it has about one third of 
a million people. It does a vast deal of manufacturing for 
the Pacific coast. It is one of the great shipping ports of 
the world, and we see ^ at its docks vessels from Asia, 
Europe, and Australia. There are ships here which have 
come ten thousand miles round Cape Horn from New 
York, and there are whaling ships ready to start out on 
their cruises to the Arctic Ocean. 

We find San Francisco anything but a town of shanties 
to-day. The sand hills have been cut down, and fine 



2^]^ CALIFORNIA. 

buildings have taken their places. The residence parts of 
the city are magnificent. Some of the richest people of 
the United States live here, and we ride on cable cars up 
Knob Hill, past the houses of millionaires who have made 
their fortunes out of gold mines, the vast wheatfields, and 
the fruit and other industries of the Pacific slope. 

Some of the poorer people of San Francisco interest us 
even more than the rich. These are the Chinese. There 
are more of them in San Francisco than in any other part 
of the United States. We see them everywhere on the 
streets. What queer-looking people they are, and how 
curiously they dress ! They have yellow complexions, and 
their little black eyes look out of what seem slanting slits 
in their faces. They are dressed in long gowns of bright 
cotton or silk, and some of them wear little round skull- 
caps with a bright button on the crown. 

There is a Chinaman who has his hat off! See! his 
head is shaved up to the crown, leaving a place for the 
hair to grow that is not bigger than the bottom of a tea- 
cup. His hair is nicely braided, and his braid, or cue, is 
so long that it reaches almost to the ground. 

There is a Chinese woman. Her eyes are just like 
those of the men, but her yellow face is painted and pow- 
dered. Her head is bare, for Chinese women do not wear 
bonnets and hats as our women do. They do not cut off 
their hair like the Chinese men, but comb it in rolls and 
braids, putting it up in ways which seem very strange. 

Notice how that woman walks. She is hardly able to 
totter along. That is because of her small feet, which are 
covered by her little red satin shoes. When she was a 
little girl her feet were so bound up that they could not 
grow, and the shoes she wears would be tight on the feet 
of an American four-year-old girl. 



SAN FRANCISCO. 



277 



We see more men, however, than women. Most of the 
Chinese who come to America leave their wives and 
daughters at home. There are quarters of the city in 
which thousands of Chinese men Hve. They are packed 




Chinese Restaurant — San Francisco. 

away at night in large buildings, scores of them often 
sleeping in the same room. We see them on the streets 
doing different kinds of work; and did we go into the 
kitchens of our hotel, we should find that most of the serv- 
ants are men of this yellow race. Many of the China- 
men act as cooks ; many are employed on the fruit farms 
and vineyards ; others have laundries, and a number have 
Chinese stores in that part of San Francisco where the most 
of the Chinese live. Not all are poor. They are a very 
thrifty people, and some of the storekeepers are quite 



2/8 THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. 

wealthy. Even the common workmen save their money. 
They work for low wages, and can live on a few cents a 
day. When they have saved a certain sum of money they 
go back to China to live, taking their money with them. 

For a time the United States allowed the Chinese to 
come here ; but so many of them were brought across the 
Pacific that our people became afraid that they would do 
all the work. It cost them so little to live that they could 
work much more cheaply than white men, and China has 
so many people that millions might come away and not be 
missed. And then, the Chinese who came did not seem 
to adopt our ways; and hence the government has con- 
cluded that, since they are not likely to make desirable 
citizens, no more Chinese can come into the country. 
Those who were already here at the time this conclusion 
was reached are allowed to stay ; but all ships coming from 
Asia are now carefully watched, and the Chinese upon 
them are not permitted to land. 



D^^C 



XXXVII. THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. 

WE will now go by rail from San Francisco to Port- 
land, at one of the western ends of the Northern 
Pacific Railroad, which crosses the United States from St. 
Paul. Leaving San Francisco, we are soon passing through 
the San Joaquin Valley, so noted for its wheat crops that 
it is called the granary of the state. We spend a day in 
riding about the slope of Mount Shasta, a wonderful snow- 
capped, extinct volcano, and then go northward into 
Oregon. 

We are now in an entirely new section of the United 



OREGON. 



279 




Lumbering in Oregon. 

States. We are in what is known as the Pacific North- 
west, which is composed of the rich states of Oregon and 
Washington. These states are much warmer than those 
in the same latitude upon the Atlantic coast. Oregon is 
far warmer than Massachusetts. It seldom, snows in Wash- 
ington, and its people have called it the '' Evergreen State," 
because its trees are green all the year round. 

How can this be, and the states be so far north ? 

It is because of the Japanese Current. You have heard 
of the warm ocean current, known as the Gulf Stream, 
which flows up from the Gulf of Mexico through the At- 
lantic Ocean. The Japanese Current is a stream of the same 
kind in the Pacific Ocean. It begins near the coast of China, 
flows north about Japan, then crosses to the lower part of 

CARP. N. AM. — 18 



28o THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. 

Alaska, and flows down by Puget Sound. Its waters act 
like a hot- water furnace. They warm the air above them, 
which blows on the west coasts of America and keeps warm 
the states of Washington and Oregon. For this reason 
there is but little snow in these states. Most of the rains 
which fall are warm, and the moist climate covers the earth 
with a luxuriant vegetation. 

Some of the largest trees in our country are to be found 
in the Pacific Northwest. In Washington there are miles 
of forests of trees, which shoot up as high as a very tall 
church steeple before they put out a branch, and then go 
upward with branches perhaps a hundred feet higher. 
Many of these big trees are hollow, and a story is told of 
a Washington farmer who used one of them as a house 
while clearing his farm. The hole in the tree was twenty- 
two feet in diameter; it was forty feet high, and a knot 
hole near the top formed his chimney. He put a floor in- 
side the tree eight feet above the earth, and upon this, the 
second story, lived with his family, while he used the 
space beneath, or the ground floor, as a stable for his horse 
and cow. 

Some of the best timber in the world comes from this 
region. Shingles are made by the millions, and shipped 
to the East. The long trees are cut into logs and exported 
to other countries, many of them being used as masts and 
spars for vessels. 

Both Washington and Oregon are rich farming and 
stock-raising states. They produce great quantities of 
fine wheat. Large crops of barley, flax, and hops, and all 
the vegetables and fruits' of the temperate zone are grown. 
The states are rich in coal and iron, and they have also 
large deposits of gold and silver. We see that the people 
are everywhere prosperous. Many of the farmers have 



OREGON. 



281 



large droves of sheep. New lands are being brought into 
cultivation, and the country is being rapidly settled. There 
are numerous villages, and we can visit many large towns. 

We spend a few days in Portland. It is situated on the 
Willamette River, twelve miles above the Columbia River, 
and is a great lumber, commercial, and manufacturing cen- 
ter. Its business buildings will compare favorably with 
those of any of our eastern cities, and it steadily grows in 
size and wealth. 

From Portland we take a sail up the Columbia River to 
see something of some of our best fishing grounds. Have 
you ever eaten Columbia salmon? It is sold in cans in 
almost every grocery store. It is delicious when eaten 




Fishing for Salmon. 

with a little lemon juice, or made into a salad. Fresh salm- 
on is far better, and at our breakfast on the boat we 
order salmon steaks. The fish are so large that they are 
sometimes served in this form, and we eat great slices of 



282 



THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST. 



the yellowish-red fish which is brought smoking hot to the 
table. 

The salmon spend the most of the year in the salt 
waters of the ocean. In the summer they come into the 
rivers to lay their eggs, and at certain times the Columbia 
is almost filled with them. They move in droves up the 
river, and are caught by nets and traps in great numbers. 
In a single year several millions of pounds of these fish are 
caught. Within the past thirty years it is said that salmon 
to the value of seventy million dollars have been taken 
out of the Columbia River. They are cooked and canned 
and sent to all parts of the world. It takes only three 
ordinary salmon to fill four dozen one-pound cans. 





Fish Wheel. 



SEATTLE AND TACOMA. 283 

The fishermen are for the most part white men, though 
a few are Indians. In some parts of the river, where 
the currents are swift, fish wheels are used. Sometimes 
such wheels are fastened to the end of a boat which is 
anchored at the right spot. The wheel is much like a 
mill wheel, save that wire nets are fastened to its rim, and, 
as the wheel turns and the nets strike the water, the fish 
are caught by them. The wheel, going on, lifts the fish 
up and sHdes them down into a trough, through which 
they fall into the boat. One night, not long ago, one 
wheel of this kind, fastened to a vessel, caught enough 
fish to sink the vessel, or fifteen tons of fish, in twelve 
hours. This, Oregon people say, is a true fish story. 

Coming back to Portland, we again take the cars, and 
a day's ride to the north brings us to Puget Sound. Here 
we visit the cities of Tacoma and Seattle, on the eastern 
shore of Puget Sound, sometimes called the '' Mediter- 
ranean of the Pacific." Within plain view of both is Mount 
Rainier, or Tacoma, one of the highest peaks of the West. 

The summer of these cities is about as cool as that of 
St. Paul, and the winters are as warm as those of Ten- 
nessee. Such snow as falls is almost immediately melted 
by the warm winds from the ocean. The summer days 
are clear and bright, and the location of the cities so far 
north gives them a long twilight during a part of the year. 

Both Seattle and Tacoma have all the improvements of 
our best eastern towns. They have fine libraries and 
schools. They have good stores, and do a large commer- 
cial and manufacturing business. They are located on 
excellent harbors, and we can find ships at their wharves 
which will take us to almost any part of the world. 

From these ports steamers sail regularly for Alaska ; 
and, a little later on, we shall take a trip northward to learn 



284 



YELLOWSTONE PARK. 



something of that curious land, the last of our territories. 
But before taking ship, there is still another very interest- 
ing and wonderful region in this western part of our coun- 
try which we must visit. Let us take a side trip five 
hundred miles southeastward, and see some of the won- 
ders of the Yellowstone National Park, in the heart of the 
Rocky Mountain highland. 



3>@4C 



XXXVIII. THE 



YELLOWSTONE 
PARK. 



NATIONAL 



THE Yellowstone Park is in the northwest corner of 
the state of Wyoming, just about midway between 
St. Paul and Portland, Oregon, You must not think it is 
little because it is called a park. The Yellowstone Park 
is almost as big as the state of Connecticut. It is owned 







View in Yellowstone Park. 



THE HOT SPRINGS. 285 

by the government, and Congress has decided that men 
must never use any of it for farming, but that it must 
always be kept as a great park, belonging to you and me 
and to the other people of the United States in common. 
This is because it is so full of natural wonders. 

The Yellowstone Park, at its lowest point, is more than 
a mile above the sea; and there are mountains about it 
which are more than two miles in height. The surface of 
the park is a rolling plateau, parts of which are covered 
with woods, while in other parts are wonderful cliffs and 
deep, yawning canyons. 

The most curious features of this region are its geysers 
and hot springs. There are more than a thousand such in 
the park. There are five hundred hot springs which are 
always boiling up water and mud. The water and mud 
contain different kinds of minerals, and as they fall back 
they leave a sediment, which in time builds up wonderful 
structures of all the colors of the rainbow. 

There is one hot spring which has formed a white hill 
about it more than two hundred feet high. As the water 
flows over the top of the hill, it falls into one semicircular 
basin after another built up by the sediment. Some of 
these basins are only a few inches deep, and others have 
a depth of six or eight feet. The mineral matter crystal- 
lizing from the water which flows over the sides of these 
basins has painted upon them all shades of blue, scarlet, 
green, and yellow. It has frescoed some with lacework, 
and given other portions the appearance of having been 
embroidered with beads. The water at the top is boiling 
hot. It grows cooler as it falls from basin to basin, so 
that, starting at the bottom, we could have a bath at any 
temperature by merely walking up to the top. 

What would you think of a spring which always flowed 



286 



YELLOWSTONE PARK. 




Hot Springs. 



mineral paint? There is such a spring in the Yellowstone 
Park, which boils and boils until it has made a great paint 
pot covering more than an acre. The paint is of all colors, 
and it bubbles up like a pot of hot mush. 

Another fountain is always vomiting forth masses of 
green, slimy mud mixed with sulphur. The smell of this 
spring is so sickening that you must put your handkerchief 
to your nose as soon as you come near it. 

The geysers are hot springs which from time to time 
throw enormous bodies of boiling water and steam into 
the air. Some of them spout every year or so, and some 
every few minutes. The Grand Geyser, the greatest in 
the world, throws a volume of steam and boiling water 
three hundred feet into the air; and another, called Old 
Faithful, sends up an immense volume of steam and boil- 
ing water as high as a very high church steeple every 
hour. Old Faithful keeps spouting for several minutes, and 
the water falls back in clouds of steam and spray. There 




The Pillars, Columbia River, Oregon. 



THE GEYSERS. 



287 



are other geysers which throw up quantities of mud, and 

the most of the geysers build up stony foundations about 

them, formed of the minerals which are in their water. 
Another wonder of the 

Yellowstone Park is the 

Yellowstone River and its 

canyons. At one place the 

waters of this river have a 

fall of three hundred feet, 

or almost twice that of the 

American Falls at Niagara. 

They go through a gorge, or 

canyon, far more wonder- 
ful than that of the Niagara 

River. The walls of the 

canyon are a third of a mile 
high, and the rocks which 
compose them are of such 
colors that the river seems 
to flow between walls of 
precious stones. There are 
tons of rock as white as 
crystal, great pieces of 
stone which shine like am- 
ethyst, and here and there 
rocks which glitter like dia- 
monds in the sun. Halfway 
down the walls of the can- 
yon there are ledges upon 

which the eagles have built their nests ; and if we look care- 
fully we may perhaps see the young eagles in them. 

These are only a few wonders of the Yellowstone Park. 
We hardly dare describe this curious region, for fear peo- 




Old Faithful. 



288 



YELLOWSTONE PARK. 



pie may think of us as they did of a preacher who once 
visited the Park, and, upon going home, gave a lec- 
ture upon it to his congregation. The people listened 
quietly until he said that he stood upon a rock by the beau- 
tiful Yellowstone Lake, and caught a fish, and then, with- 
out moving his position, gave his fishing rod a twist and 
threw the fish, still hanging to the hook, into a boiling 
spring behind him and cooked it. As he said this, one of 
the deacons arose, and asked the pastor to stop right there, 




The Fish Pot. 



saying-. " We have listened to-night to bigger stories than 
we have ever heard in our lives before; but that last one 
is too much — too much!" 

The story, however, might easily have been true. Yel- 
lowstone Lake is as clear as crystal. Its waters are cold, 
and they are filled with fine fish. Upon its eastern shore, 
only a few feet away from the edge of the water, there is 



FROM THE YELLOWSTONE TO PUGET SOUND. 289 



a deep boiling spring called the Fish Pot, and you really 
could catch a fish and thus cook it without changing your 
position. 

But it is time now to re- 
turn to the Pacific coast. 
We can go on the Northern 
Pacific or the Great North- 
ern railroad back to Taco- 
ma through a succession of 
interesting scenes. We pass 
through the mining regions 
of Montana, where many 
millions of dollars of silver 
and gold are obtained every 
year. Near Butte is the 
famous Anaconda Mine, 
from which four thousand 
tons of copper ore are 
shipped daily — the largest 
output of copper in the 
world. We cross the state 
of Idaho in its narrow part, 
following for twenty-five miles the north shore of Lake 
Pend Oreille, one of the most beautiful sheets of water 
in the world. Travelers say that its scenery very much 
resembles that of the famous Konigs-See in Bavaria. 

Before reaching Puget Sound, we pass through Puyallup 
Valley, celebrated for its hop fields. The cultivation of 
hops is now one of the great industries of the state of 
Washington. During the hop harvest as many as five 
thousand Indians come on ponies from beyond the moun- 
tains, or in canoes up Puget Sound, to find employment in 
the fields. The picking of the hops is done by the Indian 




Falls of the Yellowstone. 



290 



AMONG THE INDIANS. 





1^^ 1 


^s^:s^'^ 


■m^'-'''T . •;:?:--:^- '.{:■■■' ' 


^' flH 


Wm^ 


" " ^'~ "^SSSSSfS^SSBlA 



A Hop Field. 

women and children, while the braves look on, and smoke, 
and trade horses. The average yearly crop of hops in 
Washington is valued at about two million dollars. 



3>«^C 



XXXIX. AMONG THE INDIANS. 



WE find Indians not only in the hop fields of Wash- 
ington, but at the railroad stations in the West, 
where they have come to sell deer and buffalo horns, and 
moccasins made of skins and embroidered with beads. 
What queer people they are, and how sober they look as 
they squat or stand about the depots, with their merchan- 
dise in their hands ! Their faces are of a reddish or copper 
color. This is why they are called the red race. They have 



A PAPOOSE. 



29: 



long, coarse black hair, straight noses, high cheek bones, 
and black eyes. Both men and women part their hair in the 
middle and wear it long. 

But where are the feath- 
ers which we usually see 
on the Indian's head in the 
pictures? Very few In- 
dians wear feathers in their 
hair in times of peace. In- 
dians now dress much like 
white people, except that 
they have gaily colored 
blankets over their shoul- 
ders. Someofthe men wear 
soft hats, and nearly all of 
them have on pantaloons. 
The women, or squaws, 
wear dresses, but their 
heads are bare. 

Some of the women 
have curious bundles on 
their backs. The bundles 
look like bags, or boxes 
made in the shape of a 

little coffin. There is a squaw who has turned about, 
and we can see her bundle more plainly. Notice that hole 
in its top and the odd little brown head peeping out of it. 
That is an Indian baby, or papoose. See how sober it is. 
It turns its head about, but it does not cry. Indian 
babies seldom cry, though you would think that being 
squeezed up in that cramped position would make them 
do so. When the mother goes home she takes the baby 
off her h^ck, and stands its curious cradle up against 







A Papoose. 



292 



AMONG THE INDIANS. 



a log or the side of the house until she is ready to take 
it again. 

But where do the Indians come from? When Colum- 
bus discovered America there were Indians all over this 
continent. They were the only people on this side of 
the world. There were not very many of them, however, 

and it is said that there 
f were not half as many In- 

dians in our entire coun- 
try as there are now peo- 
ple in Chicago. 

When our forefathers 
landed on the Atlantic 
coast, they made treaties 
with the Indians by which 
they got some land. Then 
there were Indian wars, 
and, step by step, the 
white people crowded the 
Indians westward. They 
made other treaties by 
which they paid the Indi- 
ans for more and more of 
their lands, until now all 
of the country which the Indians have left is not much 
more than half as large as the state of Texas. This land 
is chiefly in the W^est, and a large part of it is among the 
Rocky Mountains. It is divided up into many tracts, called 
reservations, each reservation belonging to one tribe, or 
nation, of Indians. There are many such reservations in 
different parts of our country, the largest of all being in 
the Indian Territory. 

And are there many different kinds of Indians? 




Indian Chief — Black Bear. 



THE SAVAGES. 



293 



Yes, indeed ; all Indians are by no means alike. If the 
boys of the different Indian tribes were to come together, 
they could no more understand one another than American 
boys could understand the language of German, French, 
or Italian children. There are more than sixty different 
Indian languages spoken in the United States, and the only 
way some tribes have of communicating with other tribes 
is by signs. 

difference in the customs of the 
Some are civilized, and a few are 



is also a great 



There 
different Indian tribes, 
still savage. The savage 
Indians wlio once lived 
eastoftheMississippiare 
now confined to some 
of the Western reserva- 
tions, and are chiefly 
hunters and fishermen. 
They farm but little, and 
they still live in wig- 
wams, or tents made of 
bark or skins. They 
move their camps from 
place to place, and their 
chief wealth is in their 
cattle and horses. 

The savage Indians 
were in former times 
dangerous and cruel 
foes. They took delight 

in killing w^omen and children. They hid behind rocks and 
bushes to fight. Still, when they were cornered they would 
fight to the death. They used tomahawks to brain their 
victims, and delighted in torturing their captives and in 




Indian Chief. 



294 AMONG THE INDIANS. 

burning them at the stake. They scalped the men they 
killed in battle; that is, they cut a little piece of skin, 
about as big as a dollar, out of the crown of the head of 
each man, leaving the hair on so that they could tie it to 
their belts. It was a great honor to a warrior to have 
taken many scalps. 

All the Indians are fond of children. Among the 
Chippewas, who live in Minnesota, the mother has the 
entire control of the children until they are almost grown. 
The mother teaches the boys and girls to hunt and fish. 
They are taught to paddle canoes, and Chippewa boys and 
girls are always at their ease on the water. 

The children of this tribe choose their own names. 
When the child arrives at the age of twelve or thirteen he 
finds, some morning, a bowl of charcoal placed before him 
instead of his regular food. The child knows at once what 
this means. It means that he must go off into the woods 
and fast. He remains in the woods until he falls asleep, 
and if during his sleep he dreams of some animal, he 
chooses the name of that animal for his own name, and 
that animal is considered his best spirit. Girls and boys 
of this tribe are often married before they are fourteen, 
and an Indian usually chooses a good, strong girl for his 
wife ; for the squaw does most of the work, and a sickly 
girl is looked upon as being of little account. 

Among most of the Indian tribes, a brave has to pay a 
certain number of ponies for his wife ; but the girls have 
usually the right to choose whether they will be married 
or not. Among the Osages, who live in the Indian Ter- 
ritory, when a man wants to marry he puts on his best 
clothes, mounts his finest horse, and rides about the girl's 
tent, watching her day after day, until she finally goes out 
and speaks to him. If she does this, he knows that she 



THE PUEBLOS. 



295 



will accept him if he can pay the price to her father. 
Sometimes a man can get a good wife for two horses and 
a dozen skins ; but Indian belles have been known to bring 
as much as two rifies, thirteen horses, and a gallon of 
whisky. 

In some parts of the Southwest we shall find Indians 
who have always lived in towns, and whose forefathers 
were farmers long before Columbus discovered America. 
There are no queerer towns in the world than the pueblos 
or towns of the Moqui Indians in New Mexico and Ari- 
zona. Often you will see a little flat-topped hill rising 
seven or eight hundred feet above the rest of the country. 
Upon these the Indians build their houses, because there 
they are safe from wild animals and from their enemies. 




A Pueblo. 



CARP. N. AM. — 19 



296 AMONG THE INDIANS. 

They make the houses of stone or sun-dried bricks, and 
they build one on top of the other, in great terraces or 
steps, so that you can chmb from house to house on lad- 
ders. In some of the pueblos there are no doors to the 
first house, and you have to go up a ladder and get on 
the roof before you can come to the ground floor. To get 
to the second house, you must enter from the roof of the 
first, and so on. 

The roofs of the lower houses form the playgrounds of 
the children above. Many of the pueblos have dogs and 
cats ; and these animals, as well as the children, climb up 
and down ladders and steep stone steps, going with the 
greatest ease from roof to roof. 

Many of the Pueblo Indians are farmers. Some of them 
have large peach orchards, surrounded by stone walls to 
keep out the sheep and goats. They raise apricots, water- 
melons, and also corn, beans, and pumpkins. They make 
blankets, baskets, and pottery ; and they are in many ways 
quite civilized. 

The Navajo Indians have thousands of horses, and hun- 
dreds of thousands of sheep. They are rich Indians, and 
are industrious. They live in little round huts made of 
poles covered with earth, which have holes in the top for 
chimneys. Some most beautiful blankets are made by 
Navajo squaws. The blankets are woven by hand, and 
often sell for as much as one hundred dollars apiece. 

A large number of Indians live in the Indian Territory. 
This territory is one of the richest parts of the United 
States. It was set aside for the Indians more than fifty 
years ago, and Congress for a time hoped to make it the 
home of all the Indians. As it is now, the best part of it 
is owned by the five civilized tribes. These are the 
Cherokees, the Chickasaws, the Choctaws, the Creeks, and 



THE RESERVATIONS. 297 

the Seminoles. These Indians govern themselves, and 
many of them are far more civihzed than some of our 
white people. They have beautiful houses, and large and 
prosperous farms. They have schools and churches, and 
live much as we do. 

The Cherokees have an alphabet, and their books and 
laws are printed in their own language. At Tahlequah, 
which is the capital of the nation, a newspaper is published 
in Cherokee. Many of the men of these civilized nations 
marry white women, and the Indian girls often marry 
white men. Some of the Indians are very rich, and it is 
only by intermarriage that the whites can get possession 
of their lands; for, by our laws, no white man can buy 
land of the Indians without permission of Congress. 

For a long time our government has been trying to civi- 
lize the savage Indians. Upon every reservation is a gov- 
ernment agent, who gives the Indians certain amounts of 
food, clothes, cattle, and farming tools. About two thirds 
of all the Indians are either wholly or partly supported by 
our government, and the sums paid out for this purpose 
each year amount to millions of dollars. About one third 
of the Indians support themselves, and all govern them- 
selves under our laws. 

There are Indian schools on many of the reservations, 
and there are several large Indian colleges, such as we saw 
at Hampton, for the education of Indian boys and girls. 
Already a great many of the Indians have adopted the 
white man's clothing, and a large number of them are 
partly civihzed. Many of them, however, prefer their 
savage ways, and it will be a long time before they can 
be made to give up their lazy habits and earn their Hving 
by work as we do. 



298 



ALASKA. 



XL. ALASKA AND THE SEAL ISLANDS. 

THE northwestern part of North America belonged to 
the Russians until 1867, when they sold it to the 
United States. It then became a part of our country, 
under the name of the territory of Alaska. Alaska is so 
far away, however, and parts of it are so covered with snow 
and ice, that we do not vet know much about it. We 




hardly realize what a big country it is. It is said to con- 
tain about one sixth of all the land in our country, and to 
be so large that the New England States could be stored 
away in one corner of it. 

Alaska is a land of high mountains, of mighty glaciers, 
and of inland seas filled with icebergs. Here and there, 



THE GLACIERS. 299 

arms of the ocean run into the country for many miles ; 
and it has one river, the Yukon, which is navigable 
for small steamers for a greater distance than the length 
of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and St. 

Paul. . 

The glaciers of Alaska are among the largest m the 
world. Upon the western slope of Mount St. EUas there 
are eleven enormous blocks of ice moving down toward the 
water. One of these ice blocks is fifty miles long and 
twenty miles wide, and another, as we see it from our 
steamer, is a wall of ice two hundred feet high and five miles 
wide, and it stretches back as far as our eyes can reach. 

The Alaskan glaciers are wonderfully beautiful. The 
ice is of the clearest blue, and the glaciers look Hke huge 
blocks or walls of sapphire. They look as though they were 
great torrents of water which had been frozen as they 
were about to plunge into the sea. 

Take the Muir Glacier, for instance, which faces the sea 
on Glacier Bay. If you could double the height of Niag- 
ara Falls, and make it twice as wide, and then freeze the 
whole mass of sparkling water as it falls, you might have 
some idea of this wonderful glacier. You must, however, 
imagine a background of great mountains covered with 
snow, and a bright sun which lights up the icicles so that 
they shine with all the hues of the rainbow. 

Such glaciers are always moving downward, and parts 
of them every now and then break off and tumble into the 
sea. As they break, there is a noise like thunder. The 
piece falls down, down, down, under the water. The 
water boils, the waves roll, and a moment later a great 
iceberg rises to the surface. 

In traveling through these seas, we are seldom out of 
sight of icebergs, and we must be very careful to have our 



300 



ALASKA. 



ship out of the way when a glacier breaks and an iceberg 
is formed. 

But it must be very cold where there is so much snow 
and ice, must it not? 

Yes ; the most of Alaska is covered with snow the 
greater part of the year. The winters are very long and 
cold, and the summers short. Much of western Alaska, 
however, is so affected by winds from the warm Japanese 
Current that some parts of it, especially those near the 
coast, are quite habitable for civilized man. 

We find the climate of Sitka, for instance, mild. The 




A Glacier — Alaska. 



thermometer there seldom gets below zero in the winter, 
nor does it rise much above eighty in the summer, although 
it rains or snows during the greater part of the year. 



THE NATIVES. 3^1 

As we sail along the coast of this part of the territory, 
we pass forests almost as dense as those of Louisiana or 
Florida. There are wild hops, wild onions, and wild ber- 
ries of many kinds. The raspberries are delicious, and 
at the entrance to Glacier Bay there is a place known as 
Strawberry Point, where there are so many wild strawber- 
ries that when they blossom the land looks like a field of 
daisies, and when they ripen the berries fairly make the 
ground red. There is much grass on the islands of west- 
ern Alaska ; and even upon the coast of northern Alaska, 
along the Arctic Ocean, dandelions and buttercups blossom 
in July and August, although they have only a few days 

to live. 

The people who inhabit Alaska are mostly Eskimos and 
Indians. The Eskimos are found not only here, but in 
many of the very cold parts of North America. They 
are shorter than our Indians. They have coarse black hair, 
black eyes, high cheek bones, and broad, flat noses. They 
dress in furs, both men and women being clad in fur from 
head to foot, and having fur hoods which they draw up 
over their heads. In the colder parts of Alaska many 
have a second garment of fishskin, which they wear over 
the furs. The fishskin garment is considered a very de- 
sirable one, for, in case of necessity, its owner can eat it. 
Both men and women often wear pieces of bone and ivory 
in their lower lips and noses as ornaments, and many tat- 
too their faces. , 

The Eskimos live, for the most part, on fish and seals. 
They are fond of all kinds of fats, and it is said that they 
will eat tallow candles if they have but little food. One 
missionary who traveled through Alaska says that he had 
great trouble keeping his castor oil, for the natives looked 
upon it as a delicious foreign drink. He had to limit his 



302 



ALASKA. 



prescriptions to one dose at a sickness, and would never 
allow a patient to have more than four tablespoonfuls 
at one time. 

We see many Indian villages as we sail along the coast. 

The most of the In- 
dians of southern 
Alaska have their 
towns upon the 
beach : first, because 
they get their living 
from the sea by fish- 
ing; and, second, 
because the forests, 
except along the 
beaches, come close 
to the water's edge. 
Many of the towns 
consist of but one 
row of wooden huts, 
in front of each of 
which stands a great 
carved pole or post called a totem. The totems are from 
thirty to fifty feet high, and in the distance they make 
you think of a forest of dead trees until you come closer 
and see the houses below them. These totems are cov- 
ered with carvings of different animals and birds. Upon 
some of them are bears, whales, eagles, or ravens. Others 
have grotesque figures of men. They might be called the 
coats of arms or memorial posts of the natives, and are not 
idols, as has been sometimes supposed. 

As we sail farther north we still find that most of the vil- 
lages are near the coast. Many of the houses are under- 
ground, being made so for greater warmth. 




Totem Poles. 



SEALS. 303 

In the summer many of the Eskimos Hve in skin tents, 
and in winter they often make a tent of pure ice, stretch- 
ing their summer tent of skin over the top as a roof. They 
keep their houses a Httle warm with stove lamps, but as a 
rule they rely chiefly upon their clothing for heat. They 
travel from place to place upon snowshoes, carrying their 
household goods on sledges drawn by dogs or reindeer. 

The chief things for which Alaska is valuable to us are 
its fish, furs, and minerals. The fish of Alaska are caught 
by the millions every year, and are shipped to the markets ^ 
of our country and Europe. During certain seasons the 
salmon come into the rivers in such droves that they al- 
most fill them, and there are immense factories in which 
they are cured and canned. Great quantities of codfish 
and herring are caught, and the whaling industry also is 
quite valuable. 

The furs of Alaska have, however, been worth much 
more to us than the fish. On some of the Alaskan islands 
are the great seal-catching grounds of the world. The 
skin of the fur seal is used to make sealskin coats and 
jackets. The seals are among the queerest of animals. 
They are quite large, the males often weighing five hun- 
dred pounds, and the females about one fifth as much. 

The seal has beautiful eyes of a bluish hazel or black, 
which change in expression when he is angry or good- 
humored. His mouth and jaws are not unlike those of a 
Newfoundland dog, save that the lips are more firmly 
pressed together. He has flippers under his body. Those 
at the shoulders look like a pair of black hands, the arms 
being concealed under the skin, and the hind flippers take 
the place of legs and feet. Each seal has two coats of 
fur. One is a short, crisp, bristly one of hair, and under 
this there is a soft, close one of a downlike fur. 



304 ALASKA. 




Seals. 

One of the queerest things about the seals is the sum- 
mer trip which they all make to Alaska. Is it not strange 
to think of an animal having a summer home? This is 
the case with the seals. During the winter they livx in 
the warm waters of the Pacific Ocean, far south of Bering 
Sea. Every spring they come northward by the tens of 
thousands. They swim on and on until they reach four 
little islands, known as the Pribilof Islands, in the heart 
of Bering Sea. Here they climb up on the rocks, and stay 
until cold weather comes, when they again swim south to 
spend the winter. It is upon these islands that all the 
young seals are born. The male seals come first, and 
pick out the spots where they are to live with their fam- 
ilies ; then, a few weeks later, the females are seen swim- 
ming in ; and soon the island is covered with little colonies 
of -seals, each of which keeps, to a certain extent, to itself. 

The baby seals make us think of young dogs, and their 
cry is like the bleating of a lamb. The mother calls her 
little ones to her with a noise like that of a sheep, and the 
little seals play about together much like little puppies. 
When they are about six weeks old, they go into shallow 
pools and learn to swim ; and as they get stronger, they 



THE SEAL FISHERIES. 



305 




Sitka, the Capital of Alaska. 



roll down into the sea and take excursions of miles. The 
seals are so valuable that men are allowed to kill only a 
few of them each year. The ones chosen are males from 
three to four years old. They are not at all hard to catch, 
for they are not much afraid, and they can easily be driven 
off in herds or droves, apart from the others. The seal 
hunters carry clubs about seven feet long and as thick as 
baseball bats. They stun the animals by striking them 
on the skull, and then other men come along with sharp 
knives and kill the poor beasts. 

The skins are then taken carefully off, and laid in large 
piles, with layers of salt between them. After being 
thoroughly stilted, they are done up in square bundles, 



306 BRITISH AMERICA. 

and shipped to London, where all the fur sealskins are 
dressed. This is done by shaving the skin very thin. 
This cuts off the roots of the stiff hairs which form the 
outer coat, but does not touch the roots of the downy fur 
below. The long hairs are now brushed off, and the downy 
fur is dyed black or a rich brown, just as you see it on 
sealskin coats. 

The minerals of Alaska are very valuable. Vast quan- 
tities of gold have been discovered in different parts of the 
territory. As we sail from Puget Sound to Sitka, we go 
by Douglas Island, on which is the famous Treadwell 
Mine, out of which vast quantities of gold have been 
taken. The sands of some of the islands of Alaska are 
mixed with gold, and on the island of Kadiak men are to 
be seen who are washing the sand to get out the gold. 



3^^C 



XLI. BRITISH AMERICA. 

THERE are several ways by which we can go from 
Alaska into British America. We might sail back 
to Puget Sound, and thence cross the southern parts of 
British Columbia and Canada by the Canadian Pacific 
Railroad ; but we prefer to go up the wide Yukon River 
into the Canadian Dominion. In 1897 rich discoveries of 
gold were made on the Klondike, a branch of the Yukon. 
Since then thousands of men have gone there for gold. 
They have to undergo more hardships than the miners we 
saw farther south. The summers are very short, and the 
ground is frozen about two thirds of the year. Most of 
the gold is washed out of the earth along the streams. 
During the winter, fires are built on the ground to take 



THE GOLD FIELDS. 



307 




Washing- Gold on the Klondike. 



out the frost. Then the gold-bearing earth is dug up and 
carried to the stream, and piled up there to remain until 
summer melts the ice and gives the miners water with 
which to wash out the gold. 

We travel many days before we reach the gold fields. 
We go on through the regions of the Klondike to Dawson 
City, and then prepare for our long trip through one 
of the wnldest parts of North America. We leave the 
Yukon, and, w^ith sledges and dogs to haul our camping 
outfit, we make our way over the passes of the Rocky 
Mountains to the Mackenzie River. We then move back 
toward the south, and cut our way through the forests to 
Hudson Bay. Finally, after a long and weary journey, 
we come down into the more settled parts of Canada. 

As we travel through the northern parts of our continent 
we are amazed at its extent and curious features. There 
is so much of it that it would take years to explore it. 




23 Longitude West 




^!>^ 




^ 1 
'~'\ 


cyr-^^^^^'^'^g 






3NSI 


w^Y^Ty^ / 


E 


f|(s- ^y 


adison 
'h'icatrc 


1 ^ j Detroit^^A^ 


3 


[rom Washington 



Longitude East 



B=lAOI.Ey 4 POATES.ENGR'; 



3IO BRITISH AMERICA. 

Great Britain owns almost as much land in North Amer- 
ica as the United States. British America is about forty- 
times as big as Great Britain. It comprises one third of 
the whole British empire, and almost one fifteenth of all the 
land on the globe. 

We travel for days in the upper part of this vast terri- 
tory. It is so far north that the trees are stunted by the 
cold and never grow higher than a two-year-old child ; and 
we can hardly realize that we are in the same country past 
which we sailed as we left Puget Sound on our way to 
Alaska. The southwestern part of British Columbia is 
well wooded. It has fir trees and cedars almost as tall as 
the tallest church steeple. British America, in fact, con- 
tains the greater part of the trees now left in North Amer- 
ica. From Hudson Bay to the head of Lake Superior 
there is an almost unbroken line of forest ; and, going some 
distance north of this, you could travel from the Atlantic 
to the Rocky Mouritains and never get out of the woods. 

The most of the country is as wild as it was when 
Columbus discovered America. We sometimes go for 
days without seeing a white human being. In the ex- 
treme north we meet a few Eskimos in furs, and now and 
then an Indian from one of the tribes of the North. There 
are, in all British America, only about one hundred and 
twenty thousand Indians, scattered over the country in 
wandering tribes. The white people, including those of 
the cities, are not more in number than the population of 
the state of New York, and in the far North we meet no 
whites at all, except now and then an agent of the Hud- 
son Bay Company. 

We often stop with these agents as we go on our way. 
Each of them has a little store filled with goods for trad- 
ing with the Indians, and we see these people bring in all 



THE HUDSON BAY COMPANY. 



311 



kinds of furs and trade them for powder, glass beads, 
blankets, and other things. For more than two hundred 
years the Hudson Bay Company has controlled the fur 
trade of British America. It has its agents now every- 
where in these cold regions, and its members have grown 
rich by trading with the trappers and Indians. 




Trading Post — Hudson Bay Company. 



The Hudson Bay Company was organized in 1670. At 
that time King Charles II. of England gave a party of 
Englishmen the exclusive right to trade with the Indi- 
ans in the basin of Hudson Bay. After a time they con- 
trolled the whole of the territory between the coast of 
Labrador and the Rocky Mountains, and had in their 
employment three thousand agents and traders, besides 
many Indians. 



312 



BRITISH AMERICA. 



But could they find much of vahie in this wild and 
desolate region? 

Yes, indeed! The Canadian Dominion is one of the 
great fur lands of the world. In its forests are great num- 
bers of deer, bears, minks, foxes, and wolves. There are 
also beavers and otters in its rivers and lakes. MilHons of 
skins and furs are yearly bought by the agents of this 

company, and shipped to 
London, where they are pre- 
pared for the markets of the 
world. 

The Indians do not re- 
ceive money for the furs and 
skins which they sell. The 
trade is carried on by barter, 
of which the unit of account 
is the beaver skin. One 
beaver pelt is worth twenty 
muskrat skins or two marten 
skins, and a silver fox is 
worth five beavers. The 
Hudson Bay Company send 
out blankets, beads, knives, and other things to their trad- 
ing posts, and the Indians know very well just how much 
they should get for their skins. 

The agents of the Hudson Bay Company tell us that 
they are often a year without seeing a white man. This 
is especially the case with the agents near the coast of 
Hudson Bay. These men are visited by ships from Great 
Britain only once a year. The ships enter the bay about 
the middle of July, bringing supplies for the agents; they 
leave it about the middle of September, loaded with skins 
and furs for London. 




A Moose. 



WILD GAME. 



313 



We find no lack of either game or fish in our journey. 
We Hve in large part on what we shoot on the way. We 
now and then kill caribou, or small deer, and are very 
proud when we bring down our first moose. 

Moose hunting is by no means child's play. Many of 
the male deer of this species are eight feet high, and their 
enormous antlers, or horns, are so large that from tip to 
tip they sometimes measure six feet. 

The best time to hunt moose is in the winter. Our In- 
dian guides go with us, and we soon find a moose yard. 
This is the name of the spots in the swamps where the 
moose have regular feeding grounds. We find the yard 
by the tracks of the moose in the snow, and we prepare 
for our hunting by putting on snowshoes ; for in these we 
can run rapidly, while the moose, being very heavy, will 
sink down through the crust, and cannot escape. 

Now we are near the yard. We hide behind the trees, 
with our guns at our shoulders. The Indian guides call the 
moose by imitating their cry, and soon the great creatures 
are seen making their way through the snow. They seem 
suspicious ; but the wind 
is blowing toward us, and 
they cannot scent our 
presence. We aim very 
carefully, and bring down 
the game at the first shot. 
Had we not done so, the 
moose might have turned 
upon us and crushed us 
with its horns. The big 
animal is a fierce fighter 

when wounded, and for that reason it is a good thing to 
have a repeating rifle when you are hunting such game. 




A Grizzly Bear. 



314 BRITISH AMERICA. 

In the western part of British America we find panthers, 
grizzly bears, and mountain sheep. The grizzHes stay in 
the gloomiest parts of the Rocky Mountains. They are 
enormous beasts, and the persons who hunt them take their 
lives in their hands. The mountain sheep are found high 
up in the hills, above where the grizzlies live. They are 
very sure-footed, jumping from rock to rock, and are ex- 
ceedingly difficult to kill. 

There is excellent fishing in all parts of Canada. The 
lakes and streams are alive with fish, and we catch all sorts 
of the finny tribe, from the sweet-fleshed brook trout to 
the great salmon which weighs as much as a good-sized 
baby. 

Had we time to spend a summer in the Arctic Ocean, 
about the mouth of the Mackenzie, we might even catch 
whales, for here is one of the best whaling grounds in the 
world. The steam whale ships, which we saw at the San 
Francisco docks, go to the mouth of the Mackenzie, and 
sometimes vessels winter there, being frozen in the ice. 

In former times whales were caught chiefly from sailing 
vessels. The seamen, as soon as they got near enough to 
a whale, threw a harpoon, with a rope attached, into it. 
The sharp, arrowlike head of the harpoon stuck into the 
whale's flesh, and the great creature struggled in the water 
until it was tired out and could be killed. It was cut up 
in the water, and the huge pieces of whale blubber were 
raised to the ship's deck, to be made into oil. 

Now much whaling is done by little steamers which 
carry cannon and shoot the harpoons into the whales. 
To the harpoons are attached ropes, which are also fast- 
ened to the ships, and it is not a hard matter to kill a 
whale when once the harpoon is in him. 

Whales are also caught off the coast of Greenland, and 



THE CANADIAN FISHERIES. 



315 



they are often captured in the waters along the coast of 
Labrador and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They are 
valuable for their oil as well as for the bones. The whale- 
bone is taken from the mouths of the whales. 

The Canadian salt-water fisheries are very extensive. 
You have heard of the banks of Newfoundland. These 
are the greatest fishing grounds that have ever been 
known. Just south of the island of Newfoundland there 
is a plain under the sea, about two hundred miles long and 
seventy miles wide, where codfish, herring, and mackerel 
come by the millions to feed. These fishes are fond of 
cold water, and the Arctic Current, which washes the coast 




icebergs. 



of Labrador, brings down a sort of sHme containing sea 
life, which forms their favorite food. The waters here are 
covered, the greater part of the time, with fogs. Now and 



3i6 BRITISH AMERICA. 

then huge icebergs float through them, and fishing is ex- 
ceedingly dangerous. 

Still, fishing vessels come here from all parts of the 
world, and more codfish are caught on the Grand Banks 
of Newfoundland than anywhere else in the world. There 
are so many cod caught, in fact, that if the dried codfish 
exported in one year should all be sent to the United 
States, there would be more than enough to give every 
man, woman, and child in our country a pound and a half. 
Much of the best mackerel comes from Canada, and an 
army of fishermen is engaged in catching herring in nets, 
and in smoking, pickling, or curing them in other ways, 
for the markets of the world. 



3>^C 



XLII. THE CITIES OF CANADA. 

THE Dominion of Canada includes the whole of British 
America except Newfoundland and Labrador. Of 
the five million people who inhabit this vast territory, 
almost all live near the extreme southern edge of the 
country. We can take a flying railroad trip from west to 
east, and visit almost every large Canadian city on the way. 
We start at Victoria, on the island of Vancouver. This is 
the capital of British Columbia. It lies on a beautiful 
harbor overlooking the Straits of Juan de Fuca and the Gulf 
of Georgia. It has only about twenty thousand people, 
and we are surprised to see many Japanese and Chinese, 
who have come here on the steamships which stop at 
Victoria on their way from China and Japan to Vancouver. 
Within two miles of the city is the chief naval station 
of Great Britain on the Pacific Ocean. It is known as 



ESQUIMALT AND VANCOUVER. 



317 



Esquimalt. We visit it, going thither on electric cars, and 
look at the British men-of-war which lie in its harbor. 
There is an immense dry dock at Esquimalt, in which the 
war vessels are cleaned of the barnacles that gather on 
their hulls. There is a 
man-of-war lying in it 
at the time of our visit, 
and we watch the men 
scouring and scraping 
to get the ship clean. 

From Victoria we go 
by steamer to Vancou- 
ver. The trip takes 
about half a day. We 
cross theGulf of Georgia, 
ride under the shadow 
of the white cone of 
Mount Baker, and come 
to anchor at the chief 
commercial port of Great 
Britain on the Pacific. 
A steamer which has 
just come from Asia is 

lying beside us, and we watch the men unload packages 
of tea and other goods from China and Japan, and put 
them into the cars of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, which 
is to carry them to the East. 

It is by the Canadian Pacific that we shall journey 
from one side of Canada to the other. There is a train 
every day ; but we feel tired at the thought that the iron 
track in front of us goes on and on, without stopping, for 
a distance of twenty-nine hundred miles toward the sun- 
rise. We travel for miles through country which is heavily 

CARP. N. AM. — 20 




Dry Dock — Esquimalt. 



3i8 



BRITISH AMERICA. 



wooded, the fir trees in some places rising to a height of 
three hundred feet. We skirt the Fraser River, whose 
sands are said to contain much gold dust, and go on until 
we find ourselves in the heart of the Rockies. We rise 
higher and higher, passing through some of the grandest 
scenery in the world. We fly past glaciers. We ride for 
miles in the snow, and then shoot down the sides of the 
mountains to the lower slopes, which are covered with a 
dense growth of green. 

The first large town east of the Rockies is Calgary, a 
little city of about five thousand people, which is a supply 
point for the cattlemen who graze their herds in the coun- 
try near by, and also for the miners who work in this part 
of the Rockies. 

Going on eastward, we pass through miles and miles of 
grazing land, getting a view now and then of an antelope 
in the woods, and passing, here and there, prairie-dog vil- 
lages at the side of the track. 

We stop at Regina. This is a little town of about three 
thousand people. It is the capital of the Northwest Ter- 
ritory, and is noted as 
being the chief station 
of the mounted police. 
The mounted police is 
a military organization 
of a thousand soldiers, 
whose business it is to 
look after the Indians 
and keep order every- 
where in the vast re- 
gion of the western 
Canadian frontier. They have fine horses which can gal- 
lop immense distances in a very short time. 




Mounted Police. 



WINNIPEG TO OTTAWA. 319 

Farther east we find rich farming lands, the soil of which 
will raise excellent wheat; and at Winnipeg, after a car 
ride of fourteen hundred and eighty-two miles, we stop at 
one of the great wheat and grain centers of the world. 
There are immense elevators here. Winnipeg is the capi- 
tal of the rich wheat province of Manitoba, which raises 
millions of bushels of grain every year, forming a continu- 
ation of the bread lands of the Red River Valley, which 
we visited after our trip up the Mississippi Valley. 

Winnipeg has now about forty thousand people. It 
commands the vast trade of the regions to the north and 
west. Through Lake Winnipeg, and the Saskatchewan, 
Assiniboine, and Red rivers, it is the trading point for a 
large extent of territory. A railroad has been planned to 
go from Winnipeg to Hudson Bay. Should this be built, 
ships could come from Europe during the summer through 
Hudson Strait, could cross Hudson Bay, and be within a 
few hundred miles by rail of the great wheatfields of the 
Canadian Northwest. If this is done, Winnipeg will be 
the Chicago of Canada. 

Leaving Winnipeg, the cars rapidly take us to Port 
Arthur, on Lake Superior, and thence we go on through 
a wild, broken region, crossing many rapid rivers, and 
skirting numerous lakes. We are seldom out of the woods, 
and the extensive forests of Canada grow upon us as we 
ride farther east, through little else than trees, until, about 
thirteen hundred miles from Winnipeg, we reach Ottawa. 

Ottawa is the capital of Canada. It is a beautiful 
city. It is only about one sixth as large as Washing- 
ton, and, like Washington, it was cut out of a forest. It 
is situated on a high bluff at the junction of the Rideau and 
Ottawa rivers ; and as we walk through its wide streets, 
we can hear the murmur of the Chaudiere Falls, which 



320 



BRITISH AMERICA. 



here break the navigation of the Ottawa River, giving 
water power for numerous sawmills and factories. 




Parliament Buildings — Ottawa. 

At the highest part of the city, almost overhanging the 
Ottawa River, are the Parliament buildings, where the laws 
for Canada are made ; and near them are the great depart- 
ment buildings, in which the government of the Dominion 
is directed. 

It is at Ottawa that the governor-general of Canada 
lives. He is appointed by the ruler of England, and re- 
ceives a salary of ten thousand pounds, or about fifty 
thousand dollars, a year. He has a number of advisers, 
or cabinet ministers, much as our President has, and it is 
his business to carry out the laws of Canada as enacted 
by the Parliament. 

The upper house of the Canadian Parliament is quite 



TORONTO AND MONTREAL. 32 1 

different from our Senate. The Canadian senators are 
chosen for Hfe, ours for six years. Each province of Can- 
ada has the right to a certain number of senators, but the 
men are selected by the governor-general instead of being 
chosen by the people or legislature, as with us. 

The House of Commons is somewhat Hke our House of 
Representatives. Its members are elected by the peo- 
ple. Each representative receives one thousand dollars 
a session, or about one fifth as much as one of our con- 
gressmen receives ; and if he be absent he is fined eight 
dollars a day for the time he is away, unless his ab- 
sence is caused by sickness. Parliament fixes the taxes 
of Canada, and all the money collected for taxes is spent 
in Canada, and not, as was the case with our colonies be- 
fore the Revolution, sent to Great Britain. 

Each of the provinces of Canada has a government 
somewhat Hke that of our states ; but Parliament deals 
with the whole of the Canadian Dominion, and not with 
any special province. 

The two largest cities of Canada are Montreal and 
Toronto. Toronto is a thriving port on Lake Ontario. 
Montreal is on the St. Lawrence River, three hours by rail 
from Ottawa ; or we can reach it by a sail down the Ot- 
tawa River in the steamers which go every day from one 
city to the other. 

Montreal is the New York of Canada. It is its chief 
commercial city, and also its chief seaport. It is situated 
on an island formed by the junction of the Ottawa and 
St. Lawrence rivers. Formerly the ocean steamers com- 
ing to Canada had to stop at Quebec, because the St. 
Lawrence between that city and Montreal was only eleven 
feet deep, and this was not deep enough for large ships. 
In 185 I, however, the river was dredged out, so that there 



322 



BRITISH AMERICA. 




Wharves at Montreal. 



is now a channel more than twenty-seven feet deep all the 
way from the Atlantic Ocean to Montreal. 

We find the largest of ocean steamers at the wharves of 
the city, and see immense cargoes of grain, which have 
come down the Great Lakes and through the Welland 
Canal, being put into steamers to be carried to Europe. 

Just back of Montreal there is a high hill known as 
Mount Royal. Let us go to the top of it and take a view 
of the city. We ride up on an inclined railway, and feast 
our eyes on some of the most beautiful scenery in Amer- 
ica. Montreal, with its quarter of a million people, 
lies below us, covering a long space on the banks of the 



MONTREAL. 323 

beautiful St. Lawrence. Here and there, among the 
houses, rise the spires of great churches ; and many beau- 
tiful parks and lines of shade trees are to be seen. There, 
in front of us, we see Victoria Bridge across the St. Law- 




^W^li.?^ 



i^i 



Victoria Bridge. 

rence, which, when it was built in i860, was considered the 
most wonderful bridge in the world. It is made of 
wrought-iron tubes, so fitted together that they form a 
rectangular pipe about two miles long, and so wide and 
high that a railroad train can easily pass through it. The 
bridge belongs to the Grand Trunk Railway. 

The stone pillars of the Victoria Bridge are so built that 
their upper sides extend out into the river in the shape of 
great plowshares. The object of this is to cut the ice as 
it rushes against them in the spring. 

The St. Lawrence is frozen during the greater part of 
the winter. The snow falls very heavily in Canada, and 
for a number of years Montreal has had a winter festival, 
during which the people have built a great palace of blocks 
of ice, which many strangers have come thousands of miles 
to see. 

Both here and in many other parts of Canada the win- 



324 



BRITISH AMERICA. 



ter forms the jolliest part of the year. The snow lies 
upon the ground for months. There are skating, snow- 
shoeing, and tobogganing. Every city has its skating 
rinks, many of which are hghted by electricity. Every 
town in Canada has its snowshoe club, and in the cities 
there are numerous snowshoe organizations. Each club 
has its own uniform, consisting of a bright-colored blan- 
ket coat, and a cap, or cowl, fastened to the neck and 
fitting over the head. The clubs go out and run over 
the snow, playing games in the moonlight. They sing 
as they play, and the sight is a most curious one. 

Tobogganing is 
enjoyed by men, 
women, and children. 
A toboggan is a thin 
piece of board about 
eighteen inches wide 
and from four to 
eight feet long. The 
board is turned up at 
the front end. It has 
a very smooth bot- 
tom, and when placed 
on the edge of a hill, 
with one or more 
passengers seated 
upon it, it will rush 
over the glassy snow 
Tobogganing. with the Speed of an 

express train. The 
It is his busi- 
ness to direct the course of the board with his hands and 
feet. He sometimes makes a mistake, and turns himself 




steersman of a toboggan sits in the rear, 



QUEBEC. 325 

and the others, seated in front of him, upside down in the 
snow. 

In our travels through the eastern part of Canada, we 
are surprised to find that a large portion of the people are 
French. There are more French than English in Quebec, 
and more than one third of all the Canadians are of French 
descent. We hear little else than French spoken on the 
streets of Montreal. In the government offices papers are 
printed in both French and English, and the signs in the 
streets are in both languages. The markets of the cities of 
eastern Canada are supplied with vegetables by French- 
Canadian farmers, and we talk with the marketmen in 
French. 

The eastern part of Canada belonged for a long time to 
France. Then there was a great war between France and 
Great Britain, and in 1759 the British, under General 
Wolfe, climbed to the heights upon which the city of 
Quebec is built, and captured this well-fortified town. 

Quebec is called the Gibraltar of America. It is situ- 
ated upon a rocky bluff three hundred feet above the St. 
Lawrence, and it has many cannon which guard this water- 
way from the sea into Canada. There are forts on the 
heights on the opposite side, so that it would be a dan- 
gerous thing for a foreign battle ship to attempt to pass 
here on its way up the St. Lawrence. 

We steam down the beautiful St. Lawrence from Mon- 
treal in a night, and find ourselves at the wharves of Que- 
bec in the morning. The place where the battle between 
the French and English was fought lies just back of the 
city, on the Plains of Abraham ; and our guides tell us how 
both of the generals were killed during the engagement. 
General Wolfe fell dead on the field, having been hit 
three times, the last ball piercing his breast. Montcalm, 



326 



BRITISH AMERICA. 




The Citadel— Quebec. 

the French general, was first struck by a musket ball, and 
then by a discharge of the only cannon that the British 
had brought to the field. He was carried, mortally 
wounded, into Quebec, and at five o'clock the next morn- 
ing he died. All this happened on September 13, 1759., 
It marked the end of French rule in North America. 

The city of Quebec contains about seventy thousand 
people. It is more Hke an old French town than a mod- 
ern American city ; and as we wander through its narrow 
streets we can hardly beHeve that the town belongs to our 
pushing North American continent. The favorite mode 
of conveyance between different parts of the city is by 
calashes, peculiar two-wheeled, one-horse vehicles, which 



NOVA SCOTIA TO MEXICO. 



327 




A Calash. 



can be hired at the Hvery stables for seventy-five cents an 
hour. Dufferin Terrace, a grand promenade along the 
edge of the cliff two 

hundred feet high, v ^ .^ 

affords one of the ^^ - ?-." 

finest views of river 
and mountain scen- 
ery in the world. The 
citadel of Quebec is 
a very strong fortifi- 
cation covering nearly 
forty acres of ground. 

We make but a short stay in Quebec, and then take the 
railroad for Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, where 
there are other fortifications, and where the chief naval 
station of British America is situated. 

Halifax has about thirty-five thousand inhabitants. It 
has an excellent harbor. Here are ships from many parts 
of the world at its wharves, and we have little trouble in 
finding a vessel which takes us to Boston. From that point 
we go by rail to New York, to take the line of steamers 
which, in five days, carries us to Vera Cruz, the chief sea- 
port of Mexico. 



XLHI. SPANISH NORTH AMERICA — MEXICO. 



MEXICO is within a few days' ride of any part of the 
United States, but as we land in Vera Cruz, we 
seem to be in another world. The faces of the people are 
darker than ours. They speak Spanish, and we must 
have a Mexican guide who understands English to take us 
about. Many of the men wear hats with brims a foot 



328 



MEXICO. 



wide, and bands of silver and gold as thick as your wrist. 
Not a few have on jackets, or short coats, embroidered 
with silver braid, pantaloons the legs 
of which are ornamented with silver 
buttons, and leather belts from which 
silver-mounted revolvers hang. The 
dress of the women seems strange. 
The ladies we see on the streets wear 
black, and some have shawls over 
their heads, like those worn by the 
women of Spain. 

The poorer people are dressed in 
cotton. They have features some- 
what Hke those of our Indians; but 
they are shorter in stature, and do 
not look so strong. Nearly all of 
the men wear big hats, and not a few 
have red blankets which they drape 
picturesquely about their shoulders. 
The women wear cotton dresses, and have shawls on their 
heads in place of hats or bonnets. 

What queer houses we see in the towns! They are 
flat-roofed, and very few of them have chimneys. The 
people use charcoal for cooking, and Vera Cruz is so hot 
that you do not need a fire to keep warm. How gay the 
walls look! They are painted red, yellow, or bright blue. 
They extend to the edges of the sidewalks, and the win- 
dows of the ground floors have iron bars like those of a 
prison. 

How beautiful the flowers and trees are ! We are now 
in the land of the tropics. There is a palm tree ; and that 
long-leaved plant beside it is loaded down with bananas. 
We are now in what is known as Spanish North Amer- 




A Mexican. 



330 



MEXICO. 




Straw Cottages — Mexico. 



ica. All the country between the United States and the 
Isthmus of Panama belonged for centuries to Spain, The 
Spaniards came across the Atlantic and conquered the 
Indians, and divided up the land among themselves. 
Some of the Spaniards married Indian women, and to-day 
Spanish North America is inhabited by the descendants of 
the Spaniards, by those of the Spaniards who married the 
Indians, and by the descendants of the Indians who lived 
here at the time Columbus discovered America. The 
different countries, however, long ago rebelled against 
Spain. They now have their own governments. 

Mexico is almost one- fifth as large as the whole United 
States, including Alaska. Take your map of North 
America, and see how the country is shaped. Does it not 
look much like a great horn, the roots of which are fast- 
ened to the United States, and the tip ending in Yucatan 
on the coast of the Caribbean Sea? 



THE ASCENT FROM THE COAST. 



33 



Mexico is formed like a horn also, in that it slopes 
very steeply upward on both sides from the sea, its top 
forming a high, irregular plateau, which lies, in most 
places, more than a mile above the surface of the Gulf of 
Mexico or the Pacific Ocean. It is on the inner curve of 
the horn that we land at Vera Cruz ; and as our cars climb 
up the railroad from the coast to the plateau, we get some 
idea of the many climates Mexico has. 

Along the coast it is exceedingly hot. It is unhealthful 
here during a great part of the year, especially in the rainy 
season, when the water falls in torrents. We ride for 
miles through groves of palm trees, on the tops of which 
bunches of cocoanuts hang. We pass thickets of bamboo 
canes, whose feathery branches extend high above the 
roofs of the cars. Here are mahogany trees and ebony 
trees; and there are vines bearing vanilla beans, from 
which comes the extract we use in flavoring ice cream, 
soda water, and cake. 

The forests are full of curious flowers ; hundreds of or- 
chids, or airplants, hang to the branches ; and there are so 
many of these choice blossoms that we could have a car- 
load for the picking. 
There are birds of f 
bright colors flying 
about through the trees, 
and the mocking birds 
whistle at us as we go 
by. 

We soon reach the 
hills, and begin to go 
upward. The ascent is 

so steep that a double engine is needed. We rise in one 
place a thousand feet in twenty miles, and in another we 




A Double Engine. 



332 MEXICO. 

go Upward four thousand feet in twenty-nine miles. The 
engine puffs and groans as it pulls us about the sides of 
the mountains, dragging us through tunnel after tunnel, 
hauling us over iron bridges, now twisting this way and 
now winding that, until at last, after having dragged us 
more than a mile and a half above the sea, it lands us at 
Esperanza, at the beginning of the plateau which forms 
the greater part of Mexico. 

In our trip upward we have gone through a half-dozen 
different climates. We first rode through groves of orange 
and lemon trees. We passed by fields of pineapples, the 
red roots or bodies of which shone out below the green 
leaves against the dark ground. Pineapples, we learn, 
grow much like cabbages, and those which the Indian 
women bring to the cars, fresh and ripe from the fields, are 
far more delicious than any sold in our markets. 

A little farther on we passed through what we at first 
thought were banana plantations. The fields were filled 
with the tall, wide-leaved banana plants, but between 
them were bushes covered with dark-green leaves, and 
filled with bright red berries, each about as big around 
as a small chestnut. We saw Indians picking these ber- 
ries, and were told that they were gathering coffee, and 
that each of the berries contained two of the seeds which 
form the coffee of commerce. 

When we ask as to the bananas, we learn that they are 
planted to shade the coffee bushes, and that the coffee is 
by far the more valuable product. Coffee plants are first 
grown from the seed in nurseries. They are then set out 
in the field and are cultivated. At the age of five years 
they produce bountiful crops ; they continue to yield for 
about ten years, each bush giving from one to five pounds 
of coffee a year. After the berries are gathered, they are 






^4"'*([f*, 



3'^r'^^ .: 




THE MEXICAN PLATEAU. 



333 




Drying Coffee. 

crushed to get the hulls from the seeds, and the seeds are 
then dried and cleaned for the market. Some of the best 
coffee of the world is raised in Mexico, and there are large 
plantations in those parts of the country lying between the 
plateau and the sea. 

The most of the Mexican plateau is too cool to produce 
tropical fruits. Its chmate is a temperate one and exceed- 
ingly healthful. The weather the year round is much like 
that of an Ohio June. 

The tops of the mountains along the borders of this 
great tableland are covered with perpetual snow. The 
air is so pure that we can see many miles. The sky seems 
closer to the earth than at home, and at night the moon 
shines with a greater brilliancy, and the stars are more than 
ever like diamonds. 

It is on the Mexican plateau that most of the people 
live. There are railroads which connect the larger cities, 
many of which are more than a mile above the sea. In 
the northern part of Mexico the plateau has many 



334 MEXICO. 

deserts like those we saw among the Rockies on our way to 
San Francisco. Here the only plants which grow are the 
cacti and the sagebrush. The ground is white and glar- 
ing, and as we cross the deserts on the railroads, our eyes 
grow sore and our nostrils are filled with a suffocating 
dust. 

The surface of the plateau is rolling. Out of it rise many 
mountains containing gold and silver. It has rich valleys 
and well-watered plains, many of which are divided up 
into enormous farms called haciendas. 

What would you think of traveling for eighty miles on 
a railroad through one man's farm ? There are haciendas 
even larger than that in Mexico, upon which great herds 
of cattle, droves of horses, and flocks of sheep and goats 
are pastured. There are plantations farther south upon 
which vast crops of tobacco and cotton are grown; and 
wheat, corn, and barley can be raised almost anywhere 
upon the watered parts of the tableland. 

There are few countries where crops grow so luxuri- 
antly as in Mexico. The farmers use the poorest of tools. 
Many of the plows are forked sticks shod with iron, which 
merely scratch the surface of the ground. Still, some of 
the land is so rich that it will produce two crops a year, 
and I have seen men harvesting in one field while the 
same kind of crop was being planted in the field adjoin- 
ing. We can pick roses almost anywhere in Mexico from 
January to December; and should we ride north from 
Mexico city, we would pass through sections of the coun- 
try where strawberries are ripe all the year round. 

In our travels we see many curious plants. The cactus 
grows everywhere upon the highlands. There are many 
species of cacti in Mexico, some of which are very valu- 
able. You may have seen century plants in the hothouses 



THE CACTI. 



335 



of the United States. There is a species of this plant 
family which grows best in Yucatan. It is known as hene- 
quen, or Sisal hemp, and is of great value on account of 
its fibers. The cactus leaves are composed of long threads, 
or fibers, which, when prepared, can be used for the 
making of hammocks, bagging, or ropes. Many of the 
hammocks we use in America are woven by the Indian 
women of Yucatan. 

There is another species of cactus which grows near 
Mexico city, the juice of which, if kept a few days, turns 
into a beer which the 
natives greedily drink. 
This species is the mag- 
uey plant. We pass 
through vast plantations 
of maguey on our way 
to the Mexican capital. 
The full-grown plants 
are so big that you could 
not crowd the smallest 
of them into a hogshead. 
They have leaves from 
six to eight inches thick, 
which sprout up from 
the ground to the height 
of ten or twelve feet. 
Inside the leaves there 

is a green cone as big around as a peck measure; and 
when the plant is ripe, this cone is cut out, leaving a bowl 
which will hold about two gallons. 

Into this queer bowl the sap runs down from the 
leaves in streams, each plant producing from eight to fif- 
teen quarts of juice every day; and as this yield will con- 

CARP. N. AM. — 21 




Maguey Plant. 



336 MEXICO. 

tinue for six months, you can see that a single plant 
will produce several barrels of liquor. The juice is quite 
sweet at first, and it is as clear as spring water. It 
begins to ferment in a very few hours, and within a day 
it has turned to beer, and will make you drunk if you 
take too much of it. 

XLIV. TRAVELS IN MEXICO. 

WE remain some time in the city of Mexico, and from 
there take trips by rail and stage to different parts 
of the country. Mexico has now thousands of miles of rail- 
way, reaching all parts of the plateau and the harbors on the 
east and west coasts. The most of these roads have been 
recently built, and we can travel through many sections 
of country which until now have been almost unknown to 
the rest of the world. There is good order everywhere, 
and we cannot see why so many Mexicans should carry 
revolvers. It is because the country for years was filled 
with brigands, and it was then not safe to travel alone. 
Now, however, there is peace everywhere, and we ride on 
donkeys for miles through the mountains. 

We can get a good idea of the cities of Mexico by a 
look at the capital. The best view of Mexico city can be 
had from the spire of the great cathedral which stands in 
its center. Let us cHmb to the top, and take a bird's-eye 
view of the city. We are now two hundred feet above the 
ground, looking down upon one of the most picturesque 
cities of North America. The Mexican capital lies in a 
beautiful valley surrounded by mountains. Off in the dis- 
tance, the two great volcanoes of Popocatepetl and the 
White Woman look down upon us out of their caps of 



THE CAPITAL CITY. 



337 




The Cathedral —City of Mexico. 



perpetual snow; and the green fields of the valley are 
spotted here and there with lakes, which shine like great 
shields of diamonds under the bright rays of the southern 
sun. 

The city below looks like a checkerboard. It is di\aded 
into squares of houses roofed with brick, and the streets 
which bound the squares are of cobblestones. As we look 
down, we see that the roofs of all Mexican houses are flat. 
There is not a bit of smoke rising from them. There are 
not a dozen chimneys in the whole city, for the houses are 
heated with charcoal, and the cooking is done with the 
same fuel in little clay ovens. There are few furnaces in 
Mexico, and iron cooking stoves are almost unknown. 

On the tops of many of the houses we see white and 
gay-colored patches floating to and fro in the breeze. 



33S 



MEXICO. 



These are the family washings, which are often dried upon 
the roofs. Farther out upon the edges of the canals, at 
the outskirts of the city, there are other patches of white ; 
and you see that much of the washing of Mexico is done 
in the streams, the most of the clothes being washed in 
cold water. 

Notice how the houses are built. Few of them are 
more than three stories in height. They stand close to 




General View of the City of Mexico. 



the sidewalks, around little courts which form yards or 
gardens. Every large Mexican house has a court of this 
kind. There are flowers and trees growing in it. 

Just below us, in front of the cathedral, there is a large 
square, known as the plaza, where the band plays every 
evening, and where the people come to walk about under 
the trees. Such plazas are to be found in every Mexican 
city. The people are fond of music, and they spend much 
time out of doors. That long three-story building at the 



THE CAPITAL CITY. 339 

side of the plaza below us is the National Palace, where 
the Congress of Mexico sits, and where the officers of the 
government work. Mexico is a republic much like the 
United States. It is in that building that the President 
receives his callers ; and about him, in other rooms, are 
the chief offices of the government departments. 

What a number of churches there are, rising out above 
the rest of the houses! All Mexican cities have fine 
church buildings. The chief religion of the people is 
Roman Catholic, and for years the church owned a vast 
deal of all kinds of property. Some time ago, however, 
the government officers said that the church had too much 
influence upon the people. They took possession of 
many of the church buildings; and we shall see old mon- 
asteries and convents that are now used for public schools. 
Some have been sold for factories, and others for hotels. 

But let us go down from the cathedral and take a walk 
through the city. It is now just after noon, and we find 
the streets almost deserted. The Mexicans close their 
stores at twelve o'clock, and rest during the hot hours of 
the day. They have their dinners between twelve and one, 
after which they take a nap or chat with their families 
until three, when they come back to work. The business 
hours are, in fact, from nine to twelve in the morning, 
and from three to six in the afternoon. 

By seven o'clock most of the establishments are closed, 
and the evening is given up to rest or to pleasure. After 
seven the poorer people go out to walk in the parks, and 
those who have carriages drive out upon the Paseo, the 
wide road which runs between the city and the great hill 
called Chapultepec, on which is the summer home of the 
President. 

We are surprised to see how many poor people there 



340 



MEXICO. 




Chapultepec. 

are. There are hundreds of thousands who work for a few 
cents a day, and there are thousands of famihes supported 
in Mexico on less than a dollar a week. The Spaniards 
and the mestizos, or the descendants of Spaniards and 
Indians, own the greater part of the wealth. The Indians, 
of whom there are several millions, and the poorer of 
the mestizos, form the laboring class. They get in debt to 
their employers, and work on from year to year, taking 
only a part of their wages from day to day, and allowing 
the remainder to go toward the payment of that which 
they owe. They borrow more from time to time, and 
thus keep themselves all their lives in a sort of debt slav- 
ery. Such slaves are known as peons, and the poorer 
classes of Mexico are generally called peons. 

We see many peons in Mexico city. The men dress, 
as a rule, in white cotton shirts and pantaloons. The 
shirt is outside of the pantaloons, and the pantaloons fall 
to the feet. The peon does not wear stockings. His 



THE PEONS. 



341 



feet are shod with sandals of thick leather. He wears a 
broad-brimmed hat with a crown a foot high, and a red 
blanket, which he throws about his shoulders. The peon 
woman usually goes barefooted and bareheaded. Her 
dress is of cotton, and her only additional garment is a 
shawl, which she drapes around her shoulders and some- 
times draws over her head. 

We see many of the peons in the market. They bring 
vegetables, eggs, and other things on their backs from 
their little farms miles away from the city. They squat 
down under umbrellas, and, with their wares piled up be- 
fore them, offer them for sale. 

Indian corn forms the chief food of the people. The 
most of the people of Mexico do not know what bread is, 
and hundreds of thousands have never tasted wheat flour. 
There are vast numbers who have never had meal ground 
in a mill. Every peon woman is her own cook and her 
own miller. Outside of almost any Mexican hut we can 
see a woman preparing her Indian corn for food. She 




Making Tortillas. 



342 MEXICO. 




Hut of a Peon. 



does this by means of two stones. One is a rough slab 
about a foot wide and eighteen inches long, and the other 
is a round stone such as we use for whetting scythes. 
The woman first soaks the grains of corn in limewater until 
they are soft. She then lays them on the slab, and, getting 
down on her knees behind it, rubs them with the round 
stone into a paste or dough. She presses this with her 
hand into the shape of a griddlecake, and then lays it upon 
a charcoal fire to cook ; and in a short time the bread for 
the family is made. These cakes are called tortillas. We 
taste them, and find them quite good. The peons eat 
them without butter, though they sometimes use salt and 
red pepper for seasoning them. 

There is one dish that we shall find well served in every 
Mexican house. This dish is black beans, which the 
Mexicans call frijoles (fre-o'les). Frijoles are eaten by 
both the rich and the poor. It is not an uncommon 




l^M. 




THE MOUNTAIN DISTRICTS. 343 

thing to have them brought in at the close of the 
meal. 

The Mexicans have very good candies, and you will 
find delicious chocolate everywhere. At noon the better 
classes have a good dinner, each dish being brought in and 
served separately, and not all at once as with us. None 
but the rich can afford meat, and in some cities the way 
meat is sold makes us think that it would be dear at almost 
any price. I once saw a butcher peddling beef in the 
Mexican city of Guanahuato. His meat wagon moved about 
on legs instead of wheels. It was a dirty, one-eyed mule. 
Upon the mule's back there was a framelike saddle cov- 
ered with hooks. The pieces of meat hung from the 
hooks down the sides of the animal, the blood from them 
dripping to the ground as the mule walked along. 

The mountain districts of Mexico are among the most 
interesting parts of the country. Since the discovery of 
America, much of the silver of the world has been taken 
from the Mexican mines, and there are mines here which 
have produced tens of millions of dollars' worth of silver. 

The Mexican Indians had vast quantities of gold and 
silver when the Spaniards conquered them. Montezuma, 
the Indian emperor, gave Cortes, the Spanish general, 
plates of gold and silver as big as wagon wheels, and his 
people made spurs of gold for the Spanish horsemen. To- 
day more than one thousand mines are being worked in 
Mexico, and more than two hundred thousand men are 
employed in getting out the precious metals. 

But before we leave Mexico we must see a volcano. 
Mexico has a number of these wonderful mountains, which 
now and then Vomit forth lava, steam, and sulphur. We 
can see Popocatepetl from any part of Mexico city, and 
we resolve to climb it. 



344 



MEXICO. 



Popocatepetl is one of the greatest volcanoes, and it is 
one of the highest mountains on this continent. It is 
more than seventeen thousand feet high, or more than 
three miles above the level of the sea. We ride over a 
railroad to the town of Ameca Meca, which lies at the foot 
of the mountain. Here we take guides, who carry our 
overcoats for us. We each have a stick to keep us from 
falling, and the guides have ropes to help us over the icy 
and rough places. 

For the first few hours we go through a pine forest. 
Then we climb up hills of volcanic rock, through loose, 




Popocatepetl. 

shifting, black sand. As w^e rise higher, the trees are 
smaller, and at last we come to a point where nothing at 
all grows. 

We soon reach the snow line, where, from year's end 



CENTRAL AMERICA. 345 

to year's end, the snow never melts. The snow is soft at 
first, but as we rise it becomes harder and harder. The 
air grows colder and thinner, and at times we feel a Httle 
faint and sick. How our hearts beat! The glare of the 
hot Mexican sun on the snow dazzles our eyes, and our 
hands are torn in pulling ourselves from point to point over 
the ice. At last we reach the top, and stand at the edge 
of the crater of the greatest volcano in North America. 

Popocatepetl is not now throwing stones, rock, and lava 
into the air, but it is always vomiting out fumes of sulphur. 
We have to get to the windward of the volumes of blue- 
and-yellow brimstone smoke which rise out of the great 
hole in the top of the mountain, and then we can look 
down within. The top of the crater is almost a mile wide, 
and the hole is more than one thousand feet deep. The 
walls slope inward as they go down, and by peeping in we 
can see scores of Indians at work gathering the sulphur 
and carrying it to the top. From there it is slid down the 
mountain in a sort of trough, or chute, to be prepared for 
the markets. The sulphur of Popocatepetl is said to be the 
purest in the world, and a great quantity of it is taken out 
and sold every year. 

XLV. CENTRAL AMERICA. 

TO-DAY we leave Mexico for a trip through Central 
America. In going from the southern boundary of 
Mexico to the Isthmus of Panama, we have to travel al- 
most as far as from New York to Chicago. The journey 
requires several days if taken by sea; and should we go 
the whole way by land, we would be months in getting 
from one point to the other. 



PEOPLE AND CLIMATE. 



347 



Central America is not thickly populated. It has not, 
in all its states together, as many people as there are in 
the city of New York. The people are much like the 
Mexicans, save that there are more Indians among them. 
The country Is not unlike Mexico, with tropical lowlands 
and a strip of plateau, upon which are high volcanic moun- 
tains. In the mountains we see men and women at work 
mining gold and silver. In some places the Indian women 
are washing gold out of the streams. 

The climate of Central America Is hotter than that of 
Mexico. It grows warmer and warmer as we go south- 
ward, and on the lowlands the vegetation becomes more 
and more tropical. 

We find excellent coffee lands in many of the states. In 





A Banana Plantation. 



348 CENTRAL AMERICA. 

Honduras we visit plantations where vast quantities of 
bananas are raised for the American markets. The 
plants are started from suckers pulled from the banana 
plants already grown. The suckers are set in the earth 
about fifteen feet apart. They grow rapidly, soon reach- 
ing a height far above your head, and spreading out 
their long, wide leaves. At the age of ten months the 
first fruit can be gathered. Large bunches of green bana- 
nas now hang down from the stalks of the plant. They 
are pulled down almost to the ground, and then the 
stalk is cut next to the fruit with a long knife. The 
bananas are cut when they are green, and put upon ship- 
board for export. It takes several days for them to 
reach our markets, and they have time to ripen during the 
voyage. 

Another product of Central America which finds its way 
to all parts of the United States is chocolate or cocoa. It 
is made from the seeds of the fruit of the cacao tree, 
which is cultivated in Mexico and Central America. The 
tree is planted just as we plant peach or apple trees. 
It is carefully cared for, and after a few years it bears a red 
or green fruit, about eight inches long, in which are the 
seeds known as chocolate nuts or cacao beans. The seeds 
are very oily, and they are allowed to ferment before they 
are dried. They are ground up into a powder, some of the 
oil being taken out in the process of preparation. The 
powder, pressed into cakes, forms the chocolate which is 
sold in our stores. 

Much of our journey in Central America must be through 
the forests. No other part of the grand division has such 
dense woods as are found here. The trees grow to a 
great height and thickness. They are bound together 
by snakelike vines, and the vegetation is so dense that in 



THE FORESTS. 



349 



passing through the woods it is impossible to advance 
more than a few miles each day. 

Travel is quite dangerous in the forest regions. There 
are many poisonous snakes. There are centipedes, scor- 
pions, vipers, and all sorts of horrible creeping things. 
We see many wild beasts. There are panthers and 
jaguars. There are herds of peccaries, or wild hogs ; and 
monkeys by the hundreds jump from tree to tree. There 
are humming birds not much larger than bumblebees. 
There are wild parrots and other birds of the most gor- 
geous plumage. 

Here and there, in the woods, we find lumber camps, 
where men are cutting down mahogany, ebony, and rose- 
wood trees, to be shipped to all parts of the world for 




A Hut in Central America. 



350 CENTRAL AMERICA. 

making furniture. The camps are usually on the banks 
of a river, the lumber being dragged by oxen to the 
stream, and floated down to the seacoast. A mahogany 
camp consists of a collection of log cabins, in which from 
thirty to fifty men live and work, under an overseer called 
a captain. There is one man among them, who is known 
as the hunter, who goes through the forest and picks out 
the trees fit for cutting. This man knows a mahogany 
tree as far as he can see it, and he understands just how 
large it should be to make good lumber. 

The mahogany grows to an enormous size in Central 
America, the trunks of some trees being sixty feet high 
before the branches begin. At certain times of the year 
the leaves of the mahogany are colored as brightly as the 
leaves of our forests in autumn. It is this color which 
forms the guide to the hunter, who, having climbed to the 
top of some high tree, picks out with his eye the places 
where the mahogany trees are, and plans just how to get 
to them. No trees are cut down which are less than eight 
feet in circumference, and it has been calculated that a 
mahogany tree must be three hundred years old before it 
is ready for lumber. The wood is of such value that it 
brings high prices everywhere. 

There are also India-rubber trees. These trees in 
Central America do not grow more than fifty feet high. 
Sometimes, in gathering the sap, the rubber trees are 
cut down. Sometimes they are left standing, and the 
bark is cut away in strips from the top of the tree to its 
roots. Holes are made in the ground at the ends of the 
strips, and these are so plastered with leaves that they 
make a bowl in which the sap is caught as it oozes out and 
rolls down. After the sap has been collected, it is allowed 
to harden, and is then kneaded into cakes for the markets. 



THE ISTHMUS OF PANAMA. 



351 



The cities of Central America are few. All of them 
are small, and we find them not unlike the Mexican 




Native Shop in Guatemala. 

towns we have visited. Many of them are back from the 
sea, and few of the interior cities can be reached by rail- 
road from the Pacific coast. But there are a number of 
good harbors along the coast. 

As we near the Isthmus of Panama we find that the 
country grows more and more narrow, until, at the town 
of Panama, the distance between the Pacific coast and that 
of the Caribbean Sea is only forty-five miles. Is not this 
a narrow strip of land which ties the two divisions of Amer- 
ica together? 

Yes, indeed; but, with its rough highlands, it is big 
enough to form a great barrier to the east and west com- 
merce of the world. Could we sink the Isthmus of Panama 
or a slice of Central America under the sea, ships, in going 
from New York to San Francisco, would not have to sail 
round South America, a distance of more than eight thou- 



352 CENTRAL AMERICA. 

sand miles would be saved, and Asia would be several 
weeks nearer our Atlantic coast and Europe. 





■ — O.tl 







The Proposed Nicaragua Canal. 

The advantages of such a route are so great that plans 
have been formed to make canals through the Isthmus of 
Panama, and through that part of Central America, farther 
north, in which Lake Nicaragua lies. Lake Nicaragua is 
about half the size of Lake Ontario. It has an outlet to 
the Caribbean Sea through the San Juan River, and, by 
means of locks such as we saw at the St. Marys Falls, 
steamships might be lifted through this river into the 
lake, and thence, by a short canal, from the west coast 
of Lake Nicaragua down into the Pacific Ocean. Our 
government is much interested in this undertaking, and it 
is probable that the canal will sometime be completed. 

At present, however, there is no chance to get across 
Central America by sea ; so we take the little railroad that 
runs from one side of the Isthmus of Panama to the other, 
and within a few hours find ourselves at the town of Colon, 
on the Caribbean Sea. From this place we take a ship 
which lands us again in New York. 



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